Cheltenham, 2002

Environmental management accounting and government policy

Cheltenham, UK, February 2002

Gloucestershire Business School
Cheltenham, UK

Conference Homepage with more information

Book
Bennett, M.; Bouma, J. J., and Wolters,T. (Eds.) (2002): Environmental Management Accounting. Informational and Institutional Developments, Dordrecht: Kluwer
ISBN 1-4020-0552-0 (hardback)
ISBN 1-4020-0553-9 (paperback)

Environmental management accounting (EMA) was concerned with the uses that can be made by companies and other organisations of environmental accounting in pursuit of their own business and organisational interests, as distinct from issues of accountability to external stakeholders. Interest is increasing in the potential for governments to implement environmental policy by encouraging positive environmental performance by business and other organisations through voluntary incentives such as economic instruments. EMA can both support this directly, and help organisations to recognise and react to shifts in government policy and other changes in their business environments.

This theme included topics such as:

• the scope for governments to implement environmental policy through economic instruments and similar mechanisms for which EMA is an appropriate tool of analysis by organisations
• the implications for public policy-setting at local, national, and supranational levels
•  the implications of EMA for the effectiveness of European environmental policies
• the appropriate balance in implementing public policy between regulatory instruments ('command-and-control') and voluntary instruments (e.g. 'green taxes'), and the implications of this for companies
• how governments can best encourage and promote the dissemination and adoption of good practice in EMA
• the appropriate degree of intervention by government in order to influence the internal management of companies and other organisations
• the use of EMA by governments and governmental bodies in their own management, including in order to generate examples of good practice for wider dissemination

Other themes

There was also be opportunities at the conference to present papers on other themes related to EMA, in particular to explore how links can be built between researchers and practitioners in industry through benchmarking exercises which make comparisons of environmental management practices and performance in order to stimulate improvements.

Papers were invited on any of these themes and broadly on any area of EMA research and practice, from both researchers and practitioners. Anyone interested in submitting a paper is encouraged to contact the convenor of the 2002 conference, Martin Bennett, at mbennett@chelt.ac.uk . The deadline for submitting abstracts (summaries) of proposed papers (of 200-300 words) is 31 October 2001. Authors should provide with their abstracts their full contact details (email, postal address, telephone and fax, if all are available).

Following the conference, it was planned to invite a selection of papers for publication in a book of papers on environmental management accounting.