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I wanted to bring my own values
around environmental issues into my career
and I had an opportunity and I took it.
Why do I think my students benefit?
One of the things that I believe is true about
this course is that environmental accounting
and sustainability accounting impact
all the various sub-disciplines of accounting
from the way you would create an
accounting information systems,
where you’re collecting data for decision
making and reporting in the firm; to the
internal management decision-making process,
where management accounting comes in;
to the external reporting, which is the
financial accounting arena; and then
there’s also the auditing area of accounting,
where independent auditors come in
and audit a firm.
So, because the environmental issues span
across that, this course has a capstone flavor to it,
and it’s a way of students being able to tie
all of their educational information,
the things that they’ve learned in the
various accounting classes, and kind of
apply it to a particular accounting issue.
The other thing I would say about why
this course might be important to students, is
I don’t think the accounting profession can
ignore environmental issues for much longer;
and, at some level, the profession,
in this country, is ignoring it.
I talked to professionals and they’re
not real sure what it is, ok?
So, they say, ‘Well what is
environmental accounting?’
And it always surprises me that
they say that, because it just seems like
environmental issues, first of all,
are prominent and, second of all,
it’s so easy to make the link, that, if a
company is impacting the environment,
either positively or negatively,
there’s a potential reporting implication.
And I think, in many ways, that
while there isn’t necessarily a professional
track that students can step into at this
moment, I think there will be.
And I also think it’s important that students
kind of pick apart the main-stream,
conventional accounting model,
which we do in my course,
to understand that it’s not a perfect system,
that there is a, I guess, to use my colleagues in
Scotland’s word, there’s sort of a moral
implication around how we account for things.
We account for things if there’s an
economic transaction, basically,
we don’t account for things if there isn’t, ok?
That’s, in a sense, a moral statement.
‘Profit is good’ is a moral statement.
We’re all into growth in this country.
All of the business courses that they have
are going to promote that concept of
‘more profit is better,’ ‘more growth is better,’
and yet look at the impact on the environment.
And, an organization that has a particularly
significant negative impact on the environment
will show a profit, but no where in that
calculation of profit are the externalities,
the social costs of the environmental damage
that they do, unless there are mechanism to
bring those costs in.
Some organizations are required to report
what’s called contingent liabilities
if they think there may be a liability at
some point in the future, then they’re required
to report, but they’re reluctant to report
bad news unless they really have to.
I was talking about profit being a good thing
and I think it’s really important that students
walk out of this university understanding
that profit is not necessarily always good
and growth is not necessarily always good
and to have that in their business program
is also really important.