Social and Environmental Accounting Research: Recent Developments and Future Directions

Social and Environmental Accounting is the procedure of communicating the social and environmental effects of organizations' economic activities. As such it involves increasing the responsibility of organizations, beyond the conventional role of providing a financial account to the holders of capital. The last years have witnessed an extension in interest in social and environmental affairs. Social accounting aspires have taken place in about total ignorance of the activities and evolutions in non-accounting bodies but today many companies have developed environmental management and accounting systems. This paper provides a perception of the social and environmental accounting in various organisations. Literature review of the papers examining social and environmental matters published in several national and international journals permits the identification of the key matters, methodologies and research questions which have been principal in the social environmental accounting research (SEAR) area. Present Social and environmental matters such as climate change and greenhouse gas discharges affecting the global community. Social accounting is in this sense closely connected to the economic conception of externality. An alternative account of significant economic entities offers by social accounting. It has the potential to uncover the stress between pursuing economic profit and the pursuit of social and environmental purposes. Eventually, some future research directions are recognized and enumerates the scope of further research.