Sustainability Accounting in the Global Context

Dear Colleagues,

In the challenging context of the 21^st century, understanding sustainability accounting has become increasingly important for businesses, investors, governments and policy makers. Research has a key role in providing new insights. Despite the steadily increasing volume of research in social accounting, there remain many topics to investigate, with a specific focus on the global context.

We are interested in seeing more research that examines the role of accounting in advancing social and environmental issues, including evaluations of social and environmental reporting practices and their motivation, the role of accountants in driving CSR activities (e.g., in the preparation of CSR reports, investigating CSR expenditure patters, the provision of assurance services over CSR reports, the existence of CSR committees). Further research can focus on evaluating the credibility of CSR disclosures through assurance services and investigating the cost of assurance. This shall create opportunities for accounting professionals who have valuable resource skills that are transferable to CSR reports. There is also a scope to better interrogate the developing global financial architecture (which resulted in the recent health pandemic and financial crisis), and its potential inferences for researching auditing practices of non-financial information in different national and international contexts.

There is a need to continuously formulate and review policies and standards of corporate governance, especially when considering the significant changing environment for corporate governance in the information age and technological advances, impacting the nature of auditable social information in the process. In this context, considering new regulations should provide for the regulation of corporate boards in terms of improved stakeholder rights and more transparency vis-à-vis roles and responsibilities. Moreover, research on corporate governance has focused on listed firms; small- and medium-sized firms also play a substantial role in sustainability. Therefore, future research needs to be directed to these companies and examine the role that corporate governance mechanisms of these companies could play in improving social and environmental conditions.

Future research needs to investigate the existence and appropriateness of government legislation such as carbon taxes and carbon disclosure in the global context, as means of reducing the environmental impact of business activities.

On the other side, investigating reasons that allow firms to be socially irresponsible in the global context would be an interesting field of research. A focus beyond business practices and a critical review of engagement practices are needed in order to improve corporate reporting and accountability within societies. There is a scarcity of critical theory that brings critical attention to challenges facing sustainability accounting, including but not limited to climate change issues, human rights, and food security.

Finally, we are interested in further research that considers cultural contextual analysis in relation to the implementation of sustainability accounting. Future research could benefit from more attention to cultural specificities that impact the implementation of sustainability accounting in the global context.

Dr. Habiba Al-Shaer
Dr. Khaldoon Albitar
Prof. Dr. Zhenghui Li
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.

• sustainability
• sustainability and stakeholder engagement
• socially responsibly investment
• sustainable development and economic growth
• environmental issues and innovation
• advancing environmental practices
• integrated reporting
• sustainability and assurance
• climate change
• human right
• food security issues
• modern slavery
• carbon activities
• social dimensions
• stakeholders’ reactions
• sustainability and social media