Publication: The role of environmental accounting in international change: an exploration of Spanish companies
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1999-09
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Abstract
The critiques originated by earlier theorization of environmental accounting, as a way of building environmentalist visibility of the businesses, led Gray et al. (1995) to relate environmental accounting to the dynamics of organizational change with a view to assessing the role that environmental accounting has in the change of business to the environmental agenda. In order to investigate whether Gray et al.' s (1995) model and conclusions apply to a different context, we have conducted an empirical study in Spain. We consistently found (a) that Spanish organizations are following a first-order change. (b) Colonization and evolution types of change do not imply second-order change. (c) The use of environmental accounting is coupled with an intent to negotiate and control the environmental agenda. In addition, we found that (1) both negotiation of the environment and the opening of new discussions take place in the same organization. (2) This could be explained by the existence of two kinds of discourses, factual and idealistic, which could be the sign of a potential internal incoherence (Grenwood and Hinings, 1988) that, in turn, would suggest the transition to a higher order of change.
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Environmental accounting, Organizational change, Colonization, Transparency, Spain