Environmental accounting in China 英文原版Word论文，环境会计[精品].doc

Environmental accounting in China – the influence of accountants’ philosophical values John Margerison, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK Abstract This paper seeks to analyse a set of eight exploratory interviews with Chinese accountants in Shenyang and Shanghai in April 2010. These interviews sought to establish the environmental policy and environmental accounting in place in their organisations. They also sought to examine the accountants’ personal philosophical values, to see if there is any possibility that these values could influence organisational environmental policy and environmental accounting initiatives. Although it was found that the accountants in general had enlightened personal philosophical values on environmental matters – some based specifically on traditional Chinese philosophy – these accountants’ values were not influential at an organisational level in terms of the environmental policy or environmental accounting. Instead the following influences were identified: government, sector scandals, markets, Western parent companies’ values. Encouragingly, only one of the eight interviewees mentioned the business case as a driver for environmental accounting. Acknowledgement The research interviews in China on which this paper is based could not have been carried out without the help of Wang Yingying of Liaoning University in Shenyang and Dr Mingchuan Ren of Fudan University in Shanghai. Sincere thanks to both of these academics for their ongoing help and assistance. Paper Introduction This paper seeks to make an original contribution to the knowledge about environmental accounting in a Chinese context. It seeks to explain for the first time the ways in which Chinese accountants formulate environmental accounting responses/practices/mechanisms and the influences over their work (in particular philosophical influences). It is hoped that it will stimulate debate about the need for environmental accounting responses to be developed and foster bette