Tools for Sustainability Management Accounting: A survey of the frequency and purpose of using tools for sustainability management accounting in Swedish listed companies

Abstract

Sustainable business operations are essential as organisations have a central role in creating economic, environmental and social welfare. Organisational performance on sustainability matters is further increasingly becoming a question of survival since the reputation and legitimacy of companies is largely based on how it performs in environmental and social areas. It is therefore relevant to assume that businesses need to have management accounting tools to be able to efficiently incorporate sustainability dimensions into corporate practices and to evaluate the environmental and social impact of their businesses. Further, there is a discussion on weather sustainability accounting tools actually are contributing to sustainable development or if the use of such tools instead redirect attention away from the central issues. While research has been conducted on numerous issues regarding external sustainability accounting and communication, little in-depth knowledge has been obtained regarding the practices that are taking place within companies. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to study how frequently tools for sustainability management accounting are being used by Swedish listed companies. Further, this paper seeks to research for what purposes the tools are used. The analysis is partly based on three contingency factors; industry, size and strategy, which are used to investigate if and how these factors affect the frequency of use of tools within three dimensions; environmental, social and integrative. A web-survey of Swedish listed companies was conducted. The findings were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistics in combination with comments from the respondents collected in the questionnaire. The frequency of use of formal sustainability management accounting tools was found to be quite low indicating that sustainability issues are not very well integrated into the accounting systems of Swedish listed companies. Nevertheless, the usage varied a lot among firms and most of the companies claimed to use at least one tool in each category; environmental, social and integrative. The tools were found to be mostly used for external reasons such as monitoring internal compliance and external reporting and to a lesser extent for internal decision-making purposes. In addition, the frequency of use was found to be significantly related to company size. Industry belonging affected the use of environmental tools but not social and integrative. Finally, weak correlations were found between company strategy and the use of the three categories of tools.