TY - JOUR
T1 - There should be more normative research on how social and environmental accounting should be done
AU - Brander, Matthew
N1 - Funding Information:
The author would like to thank Rob Charnock and Ian Thomson for their kind invitation and extremely helpful feedback and suggestions for this commentary article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/5/4
Y1 - 2022/5/4
N2 - I suggest that the SEA research community has not engaged significantly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because our community generally does not offer normative policy-focused advice on how to account for climate change. This raises the question ‘Why not?’. It cannot be because there is no demand for normative accounting guidance, as examples of this need abound everywhere. And it cannot be because normativity is ‘not academic’ as other academic disciplines engage in normative research, notably the fields of economics and life cycle assessment. The SEA research community may be constrained by its social constructivist epistemology, its focus on explanatory theory which drives us towards explanatory rather than normative questions, and our training in social science research methods rather than direct engagement with how to do social and environmental accounting. Notwithstanding the challenges there is a pressing need for better accounting practice, and who better to develop methods for social and environmental accounting than the social and environmental accounting research community? Arguably, there should be more normative research on how social and environmental accounting should be done.
AB - I suggest that the SEA research community has not engaged significantly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because our community generally does not offer normative policy-focused advice on how to account for climate change. This raises the question ‘Why not?’. It cannot be because there is no demand for normative accounting guidance, as examples of this need abound everywhere. And it cannot be because normativity is ‘not academic’ as other academic disciplines engage in normative research, notably the fields of economics and life cycle assessment. The SEA research community may be constrained by its social constructivist epistemology, its focus on explanatory theory which drives us towards explanatory rather than normative questions, and our training in social science research methods rather than direct engagement with how to do social and environmental accounting. Notwithstanding the challenges there is a pressing need for better accounting practice, and who better to develop methods for social and environmental accounting than the social and environmental accounting research community? Arguably, there should be more normative research on how social and environmental accounting should be done.
KW - social and environmental accounting
KW - normative research
KW - climate change accounting
KW - normativity
KW - normative method development
U2 - 10.1080/0969160X.2022.2066554
DO - 10.1080/0969160X.2022.2066554
M3 - Comment/debate
SN - 0969-160X
VL - 42
SP - 11
EP - 17
JO - Social and Environmental Accountability Journal
JF - Social and Environmental Accountability Journal
IS - 1-2
ER -