CORPORATE STRUCTURES AND THEIR IMPACT ON DEVELOPMENT OF BOOKKEEPING AND ACCOUNTING

A long-standing ideology in business education has been that a corporation is run for the sole interest of its shareholders. Corporations are now engaging in environmental and social causes with multiple stakeholders in mind. The article attributes this phenomenon to the increasing concentration of economic activity in the world's largest corporations, which has led to a larger social and environmental impact from the activities of few corporations that can be more easily located and held accountable by an increasingly activist civil society. The article also presents a corporate structures and their impact on development of bookkeeping and accounting. Specifically, we encourage for research on the materiality of environmental and social issues for the future financial performance of corporations, the design of incentive and control systems to guide strategy execution, corporate reporting, and the role of investors in this new paradigm.