Accounting for Sustainability: Practical Insights

If businesses and other organizations are to meet the many and complex challenges of sustainable development, then they all, both public and private, need to embed sustainability considerations into their decision-making and reporting. However, the translation of this aspiration into effective action is often inhibited by the lack of systems and procedures that take sustainability into account.

Accounting for Sustainability: Practical Insights will help organizations to address these issues. The book sets out a number of tools and approaches that have been developed and applied by leading organizations to:

• Embed sustainability into decision-making, extending beyond an organization’s boundaries to take into account suppliers, customers and other stakeholders
• Measure and link sustainability and financial performance
• Integrate sustainability into ’mainstream’ reporting, both to management and external stakeholders

In-depth cases studies from Aviva, BT, the Environment Agency, EDF Energy, HSBC, Novo Nordisk, Sainsbury’s and West Sussex County Council show in detail how accounting for sustainability works in practice in a wide range of organizational contexts. Published with The Prince’s Charities: Accounting for Sustainability

Anthony Hopwood is a world-leading academic in the field of accounting. A former Dean and Professor at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford, UK, he was inducted into the USA’s Accounting Hall of Fame in 2008

Jeffrey Unerman is Professor of Accounting and Accountability at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK. He has a long standing research record in sustainability accounting

Jessica Fries is Project Director of The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project, on secondment from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. She has worked with companies over many years to help them integrate sustainability into mainstream business practices. The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project was launched by His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales in 2004 ’To help ensure that sustainability - considering what we do not only in terms of ourselves and today, but also of others and tomorrow - is not just talked and worried about, but becomes embedded in organizations’ ’DNA’. The Project works with businesses, investors, the public sector, accounting bodies, NGOs and academics to develop practical guidance and tools for embedding sustainability into decision-making and reporting processes