Embracing the Paradox in Educational Change for Sustainable Development: A Case of Accounting

Abstract

Higher education institutions have been encouraged to prepare their graduates to be socially and environmentally responsible professionals. However, previous studies have found a slow uptake of education for sustainable development (ESD) in university curricula, particularly in non-environmental disciplines. This paper investigates the process of developing educational change for sustainability in an Australian university and the impact of such development on an area that has long been resistant to the sustainability initiative—accounting. The paper analyzes an approach that embraces a top-down research-led change and a bottom-up educational change for sustainability, linking university strategy, research concentration and institutional culture development with ESD in the case of accounting. This study examines issues of interest to higher education institutions engaged in accelerating the diffusion of ESD in non-environmental disciplines.

Keywords

Non-environmental discipline research concentration capability building teaching-research nexus professional engagement institutional change

INTRODUCTION

The past decade has seen rapid diffusion of sustainability concepts in almost every area of academic endeavour. Higher education institutions have been encouraged to prepare their graduates to be socially and environmentally responsible professionals. In Australia, the discussion about curriculum change to provide students with an understanding of the environment started from the early 1990s, in particular the signing of the well-recognized Talloires Declaration of university leaders for a sustainable future in several Australian universities (Thomas and Nicita, 2002).

According to UNESCO (2005), education for sustainable development (ESD) is a process of learning how to make decisions for the long-term future of the economy, ecology and equity of all communities. This process of learning for sustainable development has been considered critical in higher education because it portrays a different view of curriculum, of pedagogy, of organizational change, of policy and particularly of ethos and draws together campus changes, curriculum development and pedagogic reform (Sterling, 2004, p. 50). Despite the widespread support for the concept of ESD, little implementation is noticed (Thomas, 2004). For example, Carpenter and Meehan’s (2002) survey investigated the extent to which environmental management has been considered a mainstream business activity within Australian and New Zealand universities. They find that in majority of the institutions surveyed, environmental management remained a peripheral management issue instead of being mainstreamed into university operations. Similar results are found in Sherren’s (2006) internet-based audit of tertiary environmental and sustainability offerings where she concludes that sustainability has not been integrated into specialist or generalist coursework programmes in Australia. Holdsworth et al. (2008) undertook a web-based survey to assess the extent to which Australian universities were engaged in professional development (PD) activities, focusing on the development of ESD for their academics. The results show that only one institution offered a PD course introducing academics to sustainability and teaching sustainability.

Another issue notable in the previous literature is that ESD is often limited to environment-specific disciplines rather than across a wide variety of disciplines in Australian universities (Thomas and Nicita, 2002; Sherren, 2006). It is common for universities to establish environment-specific courses and programmes such as environmental science, environmental engineering and management. Graduates from these specialized disciplines are expected to be environmentally literate and become specialists in this field. Although a substantial increase in the number of environment-specific courses at the tertiary level is noted by Cosgrove and Thomas (1996), most university students in other disciplines have few opportunities to undertake such single discipline-based programmes (Thomas, 2004; Sherren, 2006). In an overview of ESD status in Australian universities, Thomas and Nicita (2002, p. 477) highlight that:

The bulk of information that assists development of environmental literacy and/or education for sustainability continues to be accessible only by those most directly involved in environmentally focused education courses, such as environmental sciences…specific information regarding the movements in other course areas has not been widely evident.

As Sherren (2006) points out, the current model for Australian ecological sustainable development privileges scientific perspectives in defining and tackling sustainability and her study calls for other disciplines in the social realms to respond to, or to serve, the scientific development for sustainability. In a recently published report on Turnaround Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education (Scott et al., 2012), it is highlighted that universities must function as places of research and learning for sustainable development and recognize that sustainability needs to be embedded in all learning programmes. This echoes UNESCO’s (2005) view that interdisciplinary learning for sustainable development needs to be embedded in the whole curriculum, not as a separate environmental subject.

Although the issue of slow progress in ESD in non-environmental disciplines has been acknowledged, the debate over approaches to educational change for sustainable development has never been resolved. Previous studies have discussed the approaches to ESD in non-environmental disciplines (e.g., Ennals, 1994; Moore et al., 2005; Thomas, 2004; Sherren, 2006). Some used a ‘top-down’ change strategy whereas others supported a ‘bottom-up’ change approach. Both approaches have been examined and criticized for their oversimplification of the need for and barriers to change for ESD. It is contended that there is a lack of emphasis on a holistic institutional commitment in current approaches (Mcmillin and Dyball, 2009).

This paper investigates the process of developing educational change for sustainability in an Australian university and the impact of such development on an area that has long been resistant to sustainability initiative—accounting. The study analyzes how the university embraced the two change approaches and integrated and institutionalized its change strategy, research capacity, staff transformation and ESD at the university as well as at discipline-specific levels. As an area that is amongst the least hospitable to the sustainability movement, accounting has been criticised for decades because of its exclusion of social and environmental consequences from its conventional financial tools and techniques (see e.g., Gray and Bebbington, 1993; Schaltegger and Burritt, 2000; Gray and Collison, 2002; Parker, 2005). The issues and barriers such as the lack of competency in teaching interdisciplinary knowledge and the lack of support from professional accounting associations have been raised and discussed repeatedly. However, the means that we can use to seek improvement are limited. Therefore, the change strategy in the accounting discipline presented in this paper is considered important and timely. It can provide implications for higher education institutions and assist in accelerating the diffusion of ESD in non-environmental disciplines in the future.

The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews previous studies of ESD and critical issues identified in two approaches to educational change. In Section 3, issues relating to accounting education for sustainable development are discussed. Section 4 presents a case study exploring the process of institutional change for ESD in a university context and its accounting discipline. Section 5 provides concluding remarks for this study.

TOP-DOWN VERSUS BOTTOM-UP APPROACH: EMBRACING THE PARADOX

The Top-Down Approach

A top-down approach to educational change involves a commitment to sustainability from the top management, which is expected to lead to a change in the organizational culture and strategy (Emerson and Welford, 1997). Many organizational change studies suggest that commitment of top management is critical to the success of organizational change and transformation (e.g., Legis and Collerette, 2006; Herold and Fedor, 2008; Karp and Helgo, 2008). Leaders need to actively establish the change agenda, gain commitment to the change goals and engage stakeholders, all of which are essential steps towards a successful and sustained change (Sahadath, 2010; Gareis, 2010). Emerson and Welford (1997) support a top-down approach to educational change for sustainability instead of a bottom-up approach. They argue that active leadership where priority is given to sustainability is the only ingredient for transforming the whole organization for sustainability.

A top-down, results-driven change could lead to immediate improvements in economic value and performance, which probably explains why it has long been used as a dominant approach to organizational change (Beer, 2001). However, successful change in organizations needs more coordination across functions and business units as well as more commitment among employees (Beer et al., 1990; Legis and Collerett, 2006). As Beer (2001) points out, one of the difficulties in top-down efforts is to develop culture and capabilities for change as required. If the top-down approach faces inertia from employees, the forced change may not lead to sustained high performance. This is particularly the case in the higher education sector. Thomas (2004, p. 40) finds that a university is an institution full of academics who ‘prize their individuality, analytical skills and creativity’; therefore, guiding such a group of intellectuals for change is ‘not unlike “herding a mob of cats”’. Moore et al. (2005) indicate that the most significant barrier to transforming institutions of higher education towards sustainability is the lack of institutional commitment, a commitment that needs support from a large number of lower- and middle-level staff whose teaching or research expertise and interests are not in sustainability.

The Bottom-Up Approach

The bottom-up approach expects committed academics in sustainability to lead change and influence the entire culture of faculties or departments in universities (Thomas, 2004). Instead of focusing on leadership and system change, the bottom-up approach focuses on culture and capability development, which resolves the difficulties faced in top-down efforts. Most current uptakes of ESD in universities rely on bottom-up development efforts to lead change. For example, in the case study of Kingston University in the UK (Ennals, 1994), it is noted that courses and programmes that incorporated environmental education in non-environmental disciplines were largely developed and implemented by academics at the departmental level, even though there was a general recognition of the need for a whole institutional response.

Previous studies also highlight the challenges of a bottom-up approach to educational change. The challenge in the first place is to obtain adequate support from other academics who are not or do not intend to be sustainability experts in their relevant disciplines. In Thomas’ (2004, pp. 37–38) case study of barriers to education for sustainability in RMIT university Australia, it is noticed that although there may be enthusiasm initially from staff who are directly involved in ‘greening’ particular courses or programmes, such enthusiasm is hard to diffuse to other staff in the university. This explains why ESD is often confined to specific courses or disciplines (McMillin and Dyball, 2009). In addition to this hindrance at the lower level, the critical challenge is to obtain support and commitment from senior or top-level management so that much-needed resources and incentives can be provided. The study by Moore et al. (2005) of the engagement of University of British Columbia Canada with sustainability finds that the lack of upper-level commitment to ESD impeded the timely allocation of resources for change and the creation of entire institutional change for sustainability.

Embracing the Paradox

The failure of the uptake of ESD in previous cases and the insights gained from previous literature seems to reflect the inapplicability of a single approach to educational change for sustainability. According to McMillin and Dyball (2009), the success of educational change for sustainability hinges on developing a ‘whole-of-university’ model. The top-down approach tends to ignore the development of culture and capabilities among lower-level staff and the bottom-up approach often limits the sustainability interest within people who initiate and directly engage with the change. Neither approach, therefore, has achieved the ‘whole-of-university’ applicability for ESD.

It is increasingly acknowledged that the most effective strategy to organizational change “embraces the paradox by applying both top-down, results-driven change and slower, bottom-up development of the organisation” (Beer, 2001, p. 237). Support from the top-management to initiate educational change for sustainability seems to be indispensable as a priority for sustainability must be established and determined in the first place through a top-down change. Carpenter and Meehan (2002) point out that an institutional commitment to ESD requires the institution to proactively set environmental management as a priority by making financial and human resources available for change and support. For top management to successfully direct change, a slower bottom-up development strategy needs to be developed to obtain support from people in different levels and disciplines towards green initiatives.

ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

As a language of business, accounting is traditionally unconnected with green initiatives and changes. Gray and Bebbington (1993, p. 13) are of the view that ‘the very practice of accounting and its current fundamental assumptions about economic profit, cost, success and failure are absolutely central to the environmental crisis’. Because addressing social and environmental issues and responsibilities would question the fundamental principles of accounting practice, little or only marginal engagement with sustainable development in accounting research and education has been observed in the past (Deegan and Soltys, 2007; Parker, 2011). For example, a limited offering of social and environmental accounting education in Australian universities is found through surveys conducted by Mangion (2006) and more recently by Sundin and Wainwright (2010).

Despite calling for a reappraisal of accounting education system for decades and despite the common acceptance of pedagogical benefits from social, environmental and now sustainability accounting, educational change for sustainable development in accounting remains slow and peripheral (Humphrey et al., 1996; Sundin and Wainwright, 2010). Owen et al. (1994) outline a number of critical issues in accounting education for sustainable development. These include a lack of research in interdisciplinary accounting, which leads to a lack of competency in teaching interdisciplinary knowledge, the change initiatives predominantly dependent on individual staff’s interest and availability, uncertain student expectations, perceived lack of professional accreditation requirements and the like. Over the past decade, these problems have seen certain changes and improvements. For example, the past decade has seen greater numbers of researchers involved in interdisciplinary accounting research, especially social and environmental accounting research as themes of climate change and human rights are taking centre stage in public debate (Parker, 2011). Moreover, professional accounting associations in Australia have increased their advocacy, training and provision of research funding for corporate social responsibility in recent years and started incorporating the element of sustainability in their professional qualifications (Sundin and Wainwright, 2010; Tingey-Holyoak and Burritt, 2011). In their survey of the role of professional associations in promoting sustainable development in Australia, Thomas et al. (2012) find evidence of strong engagement with sustainability in accounting accreditation processes and professional development.

Nonetheless, many problems outlined decades ago still persist. The coverage of accounting for sustainable development in Australian university curriculum still largely relies on a limited number of academics who specialize in social and environmental accounting research (Sundin and Wainwright, 2010). Compared to the traditional focus upon economic development and corporate financial management, social and environmental accounting research is still marginalized by the majority of accounting researchers (Parker, 2011). Other issues such as resistance from Heads of School and other teaching staff and limited funding and resource available for curriculum development are common barriers.

A CASE STUDY

This study employed a case study method focusing on a single university where significant changes in the topic area took place during the time of investigation.

The University Change Strategy for Sustainable Development

The University of South Australia is one of the youngest universities in Australia, with a history of just over 20 years since its establishment. Similar to other Australian universities, the University offers a number of degrees on environmental management and sustainability, such as Bachelor of Sustainable Environments and Master of Environmental Management and Sustainability in natural resource management alike. However, since 2002 the University’s engagement with sustainable development began to expand beyond these environment-specific programmes.

The University’s increasing engagement with sustainability started when the top management acknowledged sustainability to be a core value of the University and a priority of its new strategic orientation for research excellence. Scott et al. (2012) consider that the building of leadership capabilities and competencies for sustainability is the key to progressing ESD. The University leaders formed a change strategy highlighting that sustainability and multidisciplinary research could offer new opportunities for this young university to improve its research profile and compete with older and high-status universities, which had apparent competitive advantages in most traditional disciplines. Senior management initiated change for sustainability, starting from research areas and then gradually moving to educational change for sustainability.

In the first stage of change, multidisciplinary research with sustainability elements in not only science and health, but also technology, social science and business management was defined as a key focus of the University’s research profile. The redefining of the strategic orientation became more pronounced when the University established and funded six new research institutes and research centres from 2003 to 2009 with a sustainability focus, such as institutes for sustainable societies, urban communities, systems, technologies, engineering design and healthcare. Within other research institutions where main foci were not on sustainability, interdisciplinary research groups were specifically targeted during this period, such as a research group of science, mathematics and sustainability, a research network of eco-social sustainability in the Australian Murray-Darling Basin and a research group of sustainable transport systems, to name but a few. As the University committed resources in creating and developing major research institutes and centres, multi-disciplinarity for collaborative research was promoted across many non-environmental disciplines.

Although the research-led top-down change for sustainability was fast and more time was needed for the entire institution to respond, the University leaders effectively established a foundation for a slower and bottom-up change in culture development and capability creation. Fullan and Scott (2009) stress that leaders need to bring about change by reconciling factors and divisions to achieve reform that motivates people from different groups to unify their change efforts and develop change-capable culture. One of the reflections observed in the case study was that sustainability research concentrations subsequently develop such change-capable culture. Interdisciplinary discourse was supported in this culture where leaders can work across disciplinary divisions to integrate the efforts of a wide variety of players at every level from academia, operations and administration, and help reshape unaligned systems, structures, funding mechanisms, leadership roles and performance indicators (Scott et al., 2012). It was noticed that the demand for academics and researchers with a research focus on multi-disciplinarity and sustainability increased. Such demand was not only for leading academics and researchers in various disciplines, but also for early- and mid-career academics attracted by the University-wide research emphasis on sustainability. When such research culture and capacity were gradually built up, sustainability appeared to become not just a value of the University or a performance pressure enforced by the top management, but a value or norm institutionalized and diffused among middle- and lower-level academics and researchers, who then became equipped with multidisciplinary knowledge and skills and more interested in creating and delivering sustainability knowledge in different disciplines, in particular non-environmental disciplines.

The institutionalization of sustainability value in middle- and lower-level staff started to build momentum for educational change for sustainability in 2007. During 2007 and 2010, a growing number of new programmes and courses with a sustainability focus were developed in non-environmentally specialized disciplines, mostly initiated and developed at the division or departmental level. Table 1 summarizes the seven new programmes and thirty-seven new courses across eight traditional non-environmental disciplines.

Although compared to existing discipline-specific programmes offered University-wide, the new sustainability orientated programmes and courses as shown were still limited, the rapidly increasing number of these programmes and courses across different areas in less than four years appeared to signify an institutional change for ESD. In some areas listed in Table 1, such as architecture and industrial design, mechanical and manufacturing engineering, and building and construction, the nature of the fields may technically connect with the environment and sustainability. For example, building designers may consider environmental factors as a way to reduce energy consumption and system engineers may take environmental attributes on board to improve system performance and reliability. Other areas, however, have traditionally resisted or marginalized the discussion of social and environmental responsibility. For example, the business world used to be unwilling to undertake any dialogue with the society or discuss any social and environmental responsibility (Parker, 2011).

As can be inferred from Table 1, the diffusion of sustainability research and education across various non-environmental disciplines appeared to make the educational change for sustainability inevitable in the business faculty. The School of Management launched its new programme on sustainable business in 2008, together with an increasing number of new courses in tourism, accounting, property and international relations between 2008 and 2010.

Table 1

Programmes and courses with a sustainability focus developed in non-environmental disciplines during 2007–2010

Disciplines	No. of New Programmes	No. of New Courses	Main Foci in New Courses
Architecture and design	2	11	• Environmentally responsible design • Sustainability in urban design • Consumer culture and sustainable design • Research strategies, techniques and methodologies used in sustainable design projects
Mechanical engineering	4	8	• Sustainable engineering • Energy and society • Sustainable energy system design • Energy management for sustainability • Sustainable product design • Lifecycle analysis and cost for sustainability • Air pollution from vehicles
Building/construction	–	2	• Sustainability in assets and facilities • Sustainable built environments
Business management	1	8	• Business and climate change • Services and sustainability • Sustainable corporate strategy • Sustainable value chains • Global sustainability • Risk and uncertainty analysis for sustainable business
Tourism	–	2	• Ecotourism and community
Accounting	–	2	• Sustainability accounting and reporting
Property	–	1	• Sustainability in property development and land use
International relations	–	3	• Global politics of energy security and ecological sustainability • Global perspectives on sustainability

Source: Adapted from the University of South Australia program and course outlines.

ESD in the Case of Accounting

During 2007–2010, the accounting discipline, which used to be a ‘cash cow’ for the University¹, started to recognize its need to perform academically, not just financially, in response to the University’s strategic reorientation. Such recognition was supported by the business department and a change process integrating the paradox of two change strategies is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Source: Author.

Define Research Leadership

Parker et al. (1998) contend that the essential reason for slow educational change for sustainability in accounting is that there is too much talk and confusion but not enough action. Inertia and the barriers and difficulties identified earlier in accounting education are part of explanations for such slow action. Lack of leadership and clear strategic targets is another important reason. In the case study, the redefining of the strategic orientation at the University level and the diffusion of sustainability research and education across various disciplines University-wide formed coercive as well as cognitive pressures for the accounting discipline to define its own research leadership and to take action. The defined areas would provide new opportunities for the discipline to be well known by outsiders to the University. The senior management therefore recognized interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations and partnerships in areas associated with social and environmental accounting research as new research strengths to be built and specialized in. Specific areas such as corporate social responsibility, environmental disclosure and communication, environmental management accounting, carbon emission accounting, critical perspectives on accounting, sustainability reporting and water accounting were targeted to establish clear directions for research activity, investment and resource allocation.

Research Concentration and Resource Reallocation

In the University’s research-led change strategy, the establishment of research concentrations was used as the mechanism to strengthen priority research areas and to facilitate research resource management. Under the existing division and segregation of disciplines, resources used to flow into mainstream discipline areas, leaving interdisciplinary fields with inadequate resources assigned to them. The founding of research institutes and centres that link sustainability issues to diverse disciplines prompted the reallocation of resources. Such reallocation facilitated the mainstreaming of sustainability-related research in non-environmental disciplines. In the case of accounting, the breakthrough was the formation of the first research centre in 2007 to incorporate sustainability elements into the essence of accounting. The first accounting professor specializing in environmental and sustainability accounting was brought in to direct the centre. The development resources such as grants and facilities were assigned to the centre to assist in developing the research areas defined to be of strategic importance to the University. The resources managed through the research centre not only enabled intellectual capacity building in defined interdisciplinary areas, but more importantly, enabled the building of internal and external networks with top-level professors, researchers as well as emerging accounting scholars in these areas.

Capability Building and Development

It is understood that individual staff will not become involved in any change if they do not value the opportunities offered in the change, or if they have no confidence that they can be successful in obtaining the opportunities offered. The purpose of the establishment of the research concentration and the associated networks was to facilitate the development of interdisciplinary research culture and capability at the individual level. Individual staff would need to identify their interests and opportunities in the change to align their research profile with the School’s strategic movement. This capability building was realized in two ways. First, the connection with nationally and internationally renowned professors and researchers in defined leadership areas provided mentoring, guidance and collaboration opportunities for existing staff to build up necessary knowledge, skills and competency. Second, new staff were attracted by the changing institutional environment in the School and their joining significantly promoted staff transformation. In 2007, the first year when the accounting centre was formalized, two academics specializing in sustainable water accounting and environmental accounting were brought in to promote the research endeavour of the newly established accounting centre. During 2008 and 2010, six new members at higher levels arrived to develop not only intellectual capacity, but also culture and reputation in interdisciplinary accounting research. These included two important arrivals at the professorial level. These two professors together with the professor directing the new centre became the only three accounting professors in the School and all of them had expertise in the areas of sustainability-related accounting and reporting. In Deegan and Soltys’ (2007) review of sustainability accounting research development in Australia, a few of the influential researchers (mainly accounting professors) were named. By 2010, three among the few nominated were appointed within the accounting discipline in the University.

From Critical Mass to Institutional Change

The cultural and capability building for sustainability accounting research led to the creation of ‘critical mass’ for change. The creation of such critical mass or strength was crucial. Following the international trend to concentrate on research, universities are urged to build sustainable mass to achieve high research impact (Bradley et al., 2008). As Frost (2007) stressed, the lack of development in sustainability accounting research and education in Australia is because of the lack of critical mass. In most Australian universities, the limited number of senior active researchers in the field of social and environmental accounting has constrained the number of new entrants into this field (Frost, 2007, p. 109). In the case study, the outcome of the top-down research-led change strategy was the generation of critical mass not only at leading academic positions but also at middle and lower positions. During 2007 and 2010, 18 of 28 accounting academic staff became members of the new research concentration, building direct links with the development of the sustainability accounting-oriented research centre. The accounting centre also promoted higher degree study among junior staff. Since 2007, six staff conducted their PhD study under the supervision of professors in the centre, relating their area of research to the focus of the centre. This ‘critical mass’ in the field of sustainability-related accounting research enabled the development of ‘morally governed’, ‘unspoken rules’ (Scott, 1995, p. 40) in the new institutional culture. People inside this institutional environment could sense the encouragement and rewards when pursuing sustainability-related accounting research and building cooperative teams to work on relevant topics, while outsiders could experience the persuasion and invitations to join in the collusion and benefit from the involvement (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Oliver, 1991).

With the formalization and stabilization of the institutional environment for sustainability research, the value of linking accounting to sustainable development was accepted and disseminated among each member involved in this institutional environment. Staff members were motivated to obtain and create interdisciplinary knowledge, and more importantly to deliver such knowledge to students. This institutional change prepared the accounting discipline for the next stage of development, that is, to promote the discourse with teaching and learning for sustainability.

Research-Teaching Nexus

The Bradley Review of Higher Education (Bradley et al., 2008) has acknowledged the value of nexus between research and teaching as a distinctive aspect of higher education in universities. This distinctive nature of higher education enables students to receive maximum benefit from research-informed teaching, which assists them to acquire a sophisticated understanding of their subjects and to recognize the importance of continuing to update their knowledge and skills (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 125). In the case study, the nexus of accounting research and teaching for sustainable development was initiated by several active members in the accounting centre. The changing institutional environment in the accounting discipline prompted and supported such initiation. Although the initiation was at the individual level, the observation was that this initiation for ESD no longer depended upon individual passion or interests as indicated in previous studies (e.g., Ennals, 1994; Thomas, 2004; Moore et al., 2005; Frost, 2007). Rather, it reflected the institutional interest and expectation for sustainability and multi-disciplinarity-centred accounting research and education. This explained why the engagement with teaching gained fast support from not only centre members but also senior management and other accounting staff. The bottom-up change for ESD was therefore made faster than expected. Since 2007, built upon the defined areas of sustainability-related accounting research, the themes developed to strengthen the research areas were increasingly incorporated into teaching syllabus at different levels. Table 2 provides examples of such research and teaching nexus.

Table 2

Research and teaching nexus

Defined Areas	Research Development Themes	From Research Themes to Teaching Syllabus
Social responsibility	• Corporate social responsibility • Stakeholder pressures and empowerment • Social system views of accounting	• Concept of corporate social responsibility and accountability • Legitimacy and stakeholder perspectives on accounting
Environmental reporting	• Social and environmental disclosures • Corporate environmental communication • Legitimacy and Ecocentrism	• Voluntary disclosure practice • Critical view of corporate disclosures • Global reporting guidelines
Environmental management accounting	• Environmental management accounting framework • Environmental performance measures • Environmental cost accounting systems • Environmental management accounting in public sector	• Concept of environmental and sustainability management accounting • Environmental management accounting framework • Integration with eco-efficiency indicators • Lifecycle costing systems • Activity-based cost allocation systems
Carbon emission accounting	• Carbon accounting and reporting • Carbon efficiency and performance • Carbon pricing • Carbon emissions trading impact on business strategy and reporting	• Concept of emission trading scheme • Carbon disclosure • Carbonomics
Corporate sustainability	• Sustainability and accountability • Sustainability management and communication • Public sector sustainability	• Concept of triple bottom-line accounting • Sustainability issues in financial accounting and reporting • Role of accounting in corporate sustainability management

Source: Author.

Although the coverage of sustainability accounting topics in degree syllabus was not as broad as research themes and the teaching focus was primarily on fundamental concepts of corporate sustainability and legitimacy, accounting students were for the first time exposed to the social and environmental challenges to conventional accounting ideology. Students were provided opportunities to appreciate critical and system views of accounting, questioning the function of environmental destruction and social injustice embedded in conventional accounting. For example, the stakeholder-legitimacy perspective of corporate reporting introduced accounting students to the role of social contracts between business entities and society and how corporate social responsibility would enhance stakeholder relationship and create value; global reporting guidelines provided accounting students with knowledge of quantity and quality of voluntary disclosures, allowing them to understand the impact of accounting in a broader context; and environmental management accounting framework equipped students with contemporary approaches and techniques to account for corporate social, economic and environmental impacts, integrating sustainability management into business core strategy. With the deepening of this research–teaching nexus, the value of sustainable development was dispersed from accounting research to accounting education. From individual staff to the top management, this value began to be accepted as a ‘take-for-granted’ norm. The top management highlighted in various public speeches that all professional industries would need graduates with cross-field and sustainability expertise.

Professional and Practitioner Engagement

As a profession, accounting is predominantly influenced by the expectation of professional bodies and industry practitioners. The lack of professional accreditation requirements for sustainability knowledge has been claimed as an important reason for the slow change in accounting ESD (Sundin and Wainwright, 2010). As Wylie (1995, p. 51) argues from the broader context of humanities and social science, professional organizations and key groups of employers need to be convinced that environment-related knowledge and skills are valuable; otherwise, the curriculum in non-environmentally specialized areas will not be redirected towards environmental competence. Fullan and Scott (2009) echo this argument by highlighting that teaching and research should be continuously linked with practice to enhance external engagement and service.

Based on the conceptual framework of building professional skills and capability for accounting students, Wells et al. (2009) reinforce the importance of applying research and learning into real-world situations and professional practice. They send a clear signal in the reform of accounting education to focus on real-world problems and use approaches such as case studies, integrating work placement activities and internships to bring professional practice into the formal study course. However, in the case of accounting, engagement with the professional arm of the accounting discipline for change is deemed difficult because any educational change is likely to significantly impact on or be impacted by the existing structure of accounting professional qualifications. In striving towards change for sustainability, the accounting school, in particular its accounting centre, began with building mutually rewarding links with professional associations and practitioners. Professional bodies, such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA), the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) and Certified Practising Accountants of Australia (CPA Australia), were regularly involved in school forums and seminars to discuss the challenges facing accounting education in Australia and the current requirements for developing professional accounting programmes. The central dialogue was based on the need for new knowledge of sustainability and multi-disciplinarity-centred accounting by the next generation of accounting graduates and on finding ways to direct adequate resources to this need. The debates over what changes were feasible in the near and medium terms and how changes could best be introduced to develop a sustainable future of the profession drew much attention and participation from the three major professional bodies. Their senior management appreciated the move towards sustainable accounting education and the imperative need for incorporating sustainability elements into professional qualification courses. The conversation between the academy and the professional bodies prompted a consensus for both parties, that is, it would not be eco-warriors who could save the planet, but eco-accounting professionals (Ratnatunga and Balachandran, 2009).

Curriculum Development

The development of research–teaching nexus and the engagement with professional associations provided a foundation for further change and development in the accounting curriculum. Topics relating to social, environmental and sustainability issues in accounting and reporting were covered in diverse courses at first. For example, financial accounting placed relevant topics in advanced subjects such as Issues in Accounting Theory and Financial Accounting 3. Their focus was mainly on social and environmental reporting practices and understanding the motivations for these practices. The incorporation of social and environmental reporting into financial accounting curriculum enabled accounting students to generate critical awareness of unsustainable problems in what they learnt from conventional financial accounting standards. The critical challenge in the face of financial accounting had a wider implication for management accounting courses and programmes whereby new solutions seemed necessary to tackle the critical problems identified. For example, the Strategic Accounting Programme incorporated new methods accounting for triple bottom-line, product lifecycle costs, green supply chains, carbon emissions and water, which went beyond the boundaries of conventional management accounting. In courses such as Strategic Cost Management and Management Control Systems, accounting students were specifically motivated to identify the methodological limitations in managing and evaluating accounting information and initiate creative approaches and responses to business sustainability in management decision making.

The breakthrough in curriculum development was the introduction of sustainability accounting courses that provided students with in-depth knowledge and skills to understand and analyse how sustainable development issues entrenched into every business accounting and reporting decision. The coverage of Sustainability Accounting and Reporting and later on Sustainability and Ethical Accounting was cross-field with sustainability and multi-disciplinarity set in the centre of discourse. The proposal and approval of these standalone sustainability accounting courses were streamlined in a short time period in 2009 with support from not only core academic staff in sustainability research but also those who started to get involved or peripherally involved in sustainability studies. Clearly, when the value of sustainability in accounting research and then accounting research–teaching nexus was accepted and disseminated in the new institutional setting, educators in such setting were more willing to accept that sustainability should be an important element in accounting curriculum and deserved separate courses to address the issue. The new courses were offered to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Accounting students thus had opportunities to obtain specialized knowledge linking sustainability into conventional accounting paradigm and be prepared for an accounting professional career with adequate sustainability expertise.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Based on the debate over the approaches to educational change for sustainable development, this study contends that a strategic approach needs to embrace a top-down initiation for change and bottom-up capability building to develop institutional commitments that can sustain the change. The failure of change in previous cases was either attributed to the lack of leadership or to the lack of effective mechanisms to engage with staff in non-environmental disciplines and to institutionalize change (Moore et al., 2005; Thomas, 2004). A well-designed change strategy needs to be built within an institutional environment where capability and cultural support can be developed to formalize and stabilize sustainability values during the change.

This study employed a case study of an Australian university and its accounting school where significant changes in sustainability research and education were undertaken during the time of investigation. Drawing upon this case study, the paper has presented a change framework elaborating the process of embracing the research-led top-down change mechanisms and the sustainability-centred bottom-up change for accounting education. The redefining of research leadership and the use of research concentration to redirect resource allocation are of essence to build momentum for culture development and capability creation among middle- and lower-level accounting academics. In an area that has long been denying its social and environmental responsibility, the development of culture and capability for sustainable development is crucial to create an institutional environment for change. The creation and stabilization of such institutional environment can enable the acceptance and diffusion of sustainability value in the entire field of accounting and thereby promote the educational change for sustainability, from research–teaching nexus to professional engagement, from financial accounting to management accounting, and from incorporating sustainability topics into existing courses to developing new curriculum to address the challenge.

For universities with a shorter history and less-established research concentrations as demonstrated in this case study, the change framework proposed may be of use because for younger universities, the adjustment costs to re-orientate research strengths in non-environment specific disciplines are likely to be lower than established universities where research strengths have been defined and anchored in most segregated mainstream disciplines.

Footnotes

Note

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