New Challenges in Accounting: Sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, there has been a focus on sustainability and the establishment of greater awareness within businesses of their environmental and social impacts (positive and/or negative). This, in addition to growing international regulatory pressure, has led companies to redefine their business models, strategies and internal and external processes (García-Sánchez et al., 2020).

Consistent with the above, accounting is also undergoing a transformation. It represents a useful tool for companies to increase their transparency and appropriately communicate their sustainability-related results. Reporting practices are fundamental to achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage in the long term (Khan, 2022; Al Amosh et al., 2023). For this reason, recent years have seen an exponential increase in the academic literature on the quantity, quality and determinants of different types of non-financial reporting (Minutiello and Tettamanzi, 2021).

However, there remains a debate on the most suitable tools and methods for measuring and reporting economic, social and environmental performance. Furthermore, since the publication of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the need has emerged to understand how the objectives of the 2030 Agenda are approached and represented by companies within their sustainability reports and what challenges and opportunities they represent. Furthermore, it is necessary to verify whether the definition of these objectives is sufficient to guarantee an adequate level of awareness of environmental and social sustainability.

The objective of this Special Issue is to clarify this issue by presenting studies on non-financial reporting and the representation of sustainability performance in terms of adherence to the SDGs. Consistent with the aim of Administrative Sciences, we seek original theoretical and empirical works, including interdisciplinary studies, that describe the implications of sustainability for businesses in terms of management, organization and society.

Original research articles and reviews are welcome in this Special Issue. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and their approach to Sustainability and the SDGs;
• The impact of national culture on non-financial reporting;
• The role of corporate disclosure in enhancing the focus on SDGs;
• Comparative studies of corporate disclosure practices in different contexts;
• The impacts of different frameworks on corporate disclosure;
• The role of digitalization in achieving sustainability and its influence on accounting and corporate disclosure;
• Recent challenges concerning sustainability and/or integrated reporting;
• The influence of corporate governance structure on companies’ commitment to sustainability;
• Best practices in corporate non-financial disclosure;
• The impact of gender diversity on sustainability practices and reporting;
• The evolution of processes of auditing non-financial information.

If more than 10 papers are included in this Special Issue, it is expected that they will be published in an SI book with an ISBN.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Aguilera, R. V., Aragón-Correa, J. A., Marano, V., and Tashman, P. A. (2021), “The corporate governance of environmental sustainability: A review and proposal for more integrated research”, Journal of Management, Vol. 47 No. 6, pp.1468-1497. 

Al Amosh, H., Khatib, S. and Ananzeh, H. (2023), “Environmental, social and governance impact on financial performance: evidence from the levant countries”, Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 493-513. 

Bebbington, J., and Unerman, J. (2020), “Advancing research into accounting and the UN Sustainable Development Goals”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp.1657-1670. 

Busco, C., Giovannoni, E., Granà, F., and Izzo, M. F. (2018), “Making sustainability meaningful: aspirations, discourses and reporting practices”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 31 No. 8, pp.2218-2246. 

García-Sánchez, I. M., Raimo, N., Marrone, A., & Vitolla, F. (2020). How does integrated reporting change in light of COVID-19? A revisiting of the content of the integrated reports. Sustainability, 12(18), 7605. 

Hummel, K., & Szekely, M. (2021). Disclosure on the Sustainable Development Goals–Evidence from Eu-rope. Accounting in Europe, 1-38. 

Khan, M. (2022), “ESG disclosure and firm performance: a bibliometric and meta analysis”, Research in International Business and Finance, Vol. 61. 

Minutiello, V., & Tettamanzi, P. (2021). The quality of nonfinancial voluntary disclosure: A systematic literature network analysis on sustainability reporting and integrated reporting. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2195. 

Montiel, I., Cuervo-Cazurra, A., Park, J., Antolín-López, R., and Husted, B. W. (2021), “Implementing the United Nations’ sustainable development goals in international business”, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 52 No. 5, pp.999-1030. 

Rossi, A., & Luque-Vílchez, M. (2020). The implementation of sustainability reporting in a small and medi-um enterprise and the emergence of integrated thinking. Meditari Accountancy Research, 29(4), 966–984. 

Songini L., Pistoni A., Tettamanzi P., Fratini F., Minutiello V. (2021), “Integrated reporting quality and BoD characteristics: an empirical analysis”, Journal of Management and Governance, 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-021-09568-8, Springer (Electronic ISSN: 1572-963X).

Dr. Valentina Minutiello
Prof. Dr. Isabel-María Garcia‐Sanchez
Prof. Dr. Beatriz Aibar-Guzmán
Guest Editors

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• SDGs
• SMEs
• CSR
• sustainability reporting
• integrated reporting
• ESG
• corporate governance
• diversity
• culture
• digitalization