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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2024) | Viewed by 4303

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Helena Costa Oliveira

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Guest Editor

Porto Accounting and Business School, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, 4465-004 Porto, Portugal
Interests: management accounting; sustainability; institutional logics; public sector; risk management; environmental management

Prof. Dr. Gualter Couto

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Guest Editor

School of Business and Economics and CEEAplA, Universidade dos Açores, 9500-321 Ponta Delgada, Portugal
Interests: finance; real options; eco-tourism; rural-tourism; creative-tourism; tourism sustainability
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit your works for open access publication in this Special Issue of Sustainability entitled “Management Control Systems to Sustainability”. The success of sustainability politics depends on the capacity to measure and control sustainability issues with informative value in an accurate and timely manner. Accounting and management systems should be considered relevant for the successful implementation of sustainability policies. This Special Issue aims to publish studies concerning systems to manage and control sustainability issues.

Research areas for the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

Environmental management and accounting;
Sustainability and management accounting tools;
Financial and non-financial measurement systems;
Sustainability balanced scorecard;
Activity-based costing/management;
Benchmarking;
Total quality management;
The relationship between sustainability and emerging accounting tools and concepts.

The Special Issue welcomes both qualitative and quantitative studies, as well as empirical and theoretical contributions.

Prof. Dr. Helena Costa Oliveira
Prof. Dr. Gualter Couto
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

accounting
corporate governance
environment accounting
management control systems
measurement
sustainable organization
sustainable Development Goals
social accounting
sustainability

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Research

43 pages, 2810 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Corporate Financial Performance vs. Corporate Sustainability Performance, between Earnings Management and Process Improvement

by Valentin Burcă, Oana Bogdan, Ovidiu-Constantin Bunget and Alin-Constantin Dumitrescu

Sustainability 2024, 16(17), 7744; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177744 - 5 Sep 2024

Viewed by 556

Abstract

The main objective of the paper is to assess the relationship between firms’ financial resilience and firms’ strategic sustainable development vulnerabilities, in the context of implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on firms’ business environment. Background: The last decade has emphasized an increase in business models’ uncertainty and risk exposure. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the awareness in this direction, especially in a changing context, that looks more and more for corporate sector operations’ orientation towards sustainable development. The question we would address in this paper is how the nexus between corporate sustainability performance and corporate financial resilience is affected by management decision through process improvements, product quality assurance, or managers’ preference to improve corporate financials by earnings management practice instead, especially in the context of specific corporate financial risk management. Methods: The data are extracted from the Refinitiv database. The sample is limited to 275 European Union listed firms, selected based on data availability. The empirical analysis consists of an OLS multiple regression. For robustness purposes, a quantile regression model is estimated as well. Results: The approach considers implications of the pandemic on firms’ business environment and earnings management accounting based policies and strategies as well. The result suggests that alignment to sustainability frameworks lead to the deterioration of firms’ financial resilience. Similar results show the negative impact of firms’ financial vulnerability (credit default risk) on firms’ financial resilience. Instead, the risk of bankruptcy, firms’ liquidity, or high product quality and business process improvement determine the positive impact on firms’ financial resilience. Conclusions: The study highlights several insights both for management and policy makers. First, the results underline the relevance of management’s choice for earnings management on ensuring firms’ financial resilience, which ask for better corporate governance and high-quality and effective institutional regulatory and enforcement mechanisms. Second, the paper brings evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on firms’ financial sustainable development. Third, the study emphasizes the importance of the efforts of corporate process improvements and high-quality products on generating value-add, by looking on the relevance of those drivers on the level of corporate economic value-add, a measure that limits the impact of discretionary management accrual-based accounting choices on our discussion. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Management Control Systems to Sustainability)

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19 pages, 1875 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Management Control Systems and Sustainability: A Bibliometric Analysis

by Patrícia Quesado, Rui Silva and Helena Costa Oliveira

Sustainability 2024, 16(12), 5067; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16125067 - 14 Jun 2024

Viewed by 1079

Abstract

Including social and environmental concerns in decision-making processes and business operations is essential for organizations. Management control systems are crucial in integrating sustainability issues into decision-making processes. Thus, this study aims to analyze international publications about the relationship between management control systems and sustainability, identifying trends in evolution and future research opportunities. Based on bibliometric techniques, the outputs obtained in the Web of Science (n = 139) and Scopus (n = 73) databases were analyzed in the bibliometrix R package to map and systematically review the literature. After removing duplicates, we obtained a final output of 157 articles. The analysis of these publications draws attention to the relevance and emergence of these topics in academic and business circles and concludes that this area of knowledge has gained relevance in the last five years of research. The originality of this study lies in its ability to offer valuable insights that can shape future research agendas. By focusing specifically on how management control systems support or hinder sustainability initiatives, the study fills a gap in existing literature, which often treats these subjects separately. Future research can focus on the challenges of integrating sustainability into accounting frameworks and the role of technology in accounting for sustainability. The continuous study of these topics is essential to enable professionals and organizations to face contemporary challenges, ensure ethics and transparency, promote sustainability and responsibility, and ensure long-term success in a world increasingly aware of environmental and social issues. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Management Control Systems to Sustainability)

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20 pages, 1552 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Institutional Pressures and Environmental Management Accounting Adoption: Do Environmental Strategy Matter?

by Musaab Alnaim and Abdelmoneim Bahyeldin Mohamed Metwally

Sustainability 2024, 16(7), 3020; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16073020 - 4 Apr 2024

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1883

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of institutional pressures (IPs) on Environmental Management Accounting adoption (EMA). The current research also aims to examine the moderating effect of environmental strategy (ES) on the relationship between IP and EMA. Data were collected from managers working in all registered Egyptian manufacturing companies (N = 491). The collected data were analyzed using smart partial least squares (Smart-PLS) software. The results revealed that there is a positive significant relationship between IP’s three components, namely, coercive, normative, and mimicry pressures, and EMA. The results also revealed that ES was found to moderate the relationship between IP and EMA. The study model was able to explain 68.9% of the variance in EMA adoption. The findings of this study serve as a pivotal yardstick for guiding corporate policy formulation, offering valuable insights to drive continuous improvements in EMA, environmental performance, and sustainable development. The present investigation extends the discourse on the role of IP and ES by revealing a substantial influence on EMA adoption. Positioned as one of the initial studies to delve into the moderating role of ES in the relationship between IP and EMA adoption, this research offers insights within an emerging market context. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Management Control Systems to Sustainability)

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