[雙語翻譯]綠色會計外文翻譯--綠色會計從企業(yè)社會責(zé)任和環(huán)境披露角度反思（英文）

1、Green accounting: Reflections from a CSR and environmental disclosure perspectiveCharles H. Cho a,*, Dennis M. Patten ba ESSEC Business School, Avenue Bernard Hirsch, BP 50105, 95021 Cergy Pontoise Cedex, France b Depart

2、ment of Accounting – 5520, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61761-5520, USA1. IntroductionWe appreciate the opportunity to reflect on, specifically, Thornton’s (1993, 2013) contributions to the debate on environment

3、al accounting, and more generally, on what we see as the concerns that environmental (and social) accounting needs to deal with.1 We have carefully read his new exposition and, given its reliance on the original CA Magaz

4、ine article, we carefully reviewed it as well. Let us state from the beginning, that we agree wholeheartedly with three major points from these works. First, like Thornton (1993, p. 39), we believe that ‘‘we can’t really

5、 decide how to do green accounting until we settle some fundamental, epistemological issues of what we are supposed to account for’’ (and we do not believe we have much chance of ever settling those issues). Second, we c

6、oncur that the asset retirement obligation (ARO) accounting requirements now in place are an improvement over the situation that existed when Thornton first discussed environmental accounting. Finally, and perhaps most i

7、mportantly for our argument, we agree with Thornton (1993, p. 37) that ‘‘information is never perfect.’’ Where we differ, and this perhaps relates back to agreement number one, is on what we see as within the purview of

8、the accounting domain.Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 443–447A R T I C L E I N F OArticle history:Received 31 December 2012Accepted 23 April 2013Available online 27 May 2013Mots cle ´s:Environnemental

9、SocialDe ´veloppement durablePalabras clave:AmbientalSocialSostenibilidadKeywords:EnvironmentalSocialSustainabilityA B S T R A C TIn this commentary, we reflect on Thornton’s (2013) extension to his original CA Maga

10、zinearticle on environmental accounting (Thornton, 1993) as well as the original contribution.Given our background in social and environmental disclosure research, we questionThornton’s narrow focus on environmental acco

11、unting as it relates to the debits andcredits of financial reporting, and we attempt to illustrate the problems that voluntaryenvironmental disclosure creates with respect to reduced incentives for companies toimprove en

12、vironmental performance. We conclude by identifying our concerns with thefuture of environmental accounting given the recent ‘rediscovery’ of the topic bymainstream accounting researchers.? 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights

13、reserved.* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: cho@essec.edu (C.H. Cho), dmpatte@ilstu.edu (D.M. Patten).1 This special issue includes other reflection papers that provide different reactions and perspectives (Deegan,

14、 2013; Gray, 2013; Spence et al., 2013).Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirectCritical Perspectives on Accountingjou r nal h o mep ag e: w ww .els evier .co m/lo c ate/c pa1045-2354/$ – see front matter ? 201

15、3 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2013.04.003He further cites Abercrombie et al. (1984, p. 13) to make the case that ‘‘the language by which people justify their behavior when challenged

16、 by another social actor . . . is an ‘a(chǎn)ccount’’’ (Gray, 2010, p. 47). As such, we argue that information companies voluntarily choose to provide through, originally, disclosures in their annual reports, and more recently

17、, through websites and stand-alone CSR reports, represent attempts to ‘a(chǎn)ccount’ for their environmental (and social) behaviors, and as such, are very much within the realm of ‘a(chǎn)ccounting’. Unfortunately, many of the prob

18、lems we had with the voluntary environmental disclosure of twenty years ago remain unchanged today, and we would like to expand Thornton’s (1993) original base case to illustrate our concerns.3. An expansion of the Thorn

19、ton (1993) exampleLet’s assume, instead of a single oil company, a market consisting of two competing firms. Let’s call them Good and Evil, and let’s assume that at the start of period i they are both valued in the marke

20、t at $1,000,000. Now let’s assume the government imposes new regulations designed to reduce the harmful effects of oil company activities on the environment. The market must now assess its beliefs about the cost of the n

21、ew regulations on each firm, E[$GGood], E[$GEvil] (for the sake of simplicity, we note this ‘cost’ includes all other potential changes in future cash flows – that is, it includes what Thornton laid out as $x and $y, as

22、well as any potential product price changes that could be imposed to offset these costs). Because the regulations are meant to reduce harmful effects, we can assume that $G will be higher for the firm whose operations ar

23、e more harmful, and as such, information on each company’s environmental performance would appear potentially to have value relevance.5One potential source of environmental performance information is the disclosures comp

24、anies voluntarily choose to provide in their financial reports.6 Proponents of voluntary disclosure theory (VDT) argue that companies choose to provide voluntary financial report environmental disclosures due to informat

25、ion asymmetry between managers and investors. Better performers, they argue, want to signal to the market their superior position through disclosure, while worse performers will choose to remain silent and as such, be ju

26、dged an ‘‘a(chǎn)verage-type’’ firm (Clarkson et al., 2008, p. 304). This interpretation of the choice to disclose is perfectly logical in a world where no other sources of companies’ environmental performance are publicly ava

27、ilable. But that does not include the investing world in, for example, North America. In the U.S., most manufacturing firms and utilities are required to provide to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annual estima

28、tes of toxics released into the environment and the EPA makes this information publicly available. Information on other air and water pollution performance issues is also available through the EPA (see, e.g., Hughes, 200

29、0; Clarkson et al., 2004). Similar reporting is required by companies in Canada through the National Pollutant Release Inventory managed by Environment Canada. There are also proprietary firms such as MSCI,7 Sutainalytic

30、s or Trucost that use this data, and information gathered from other sources, to make available to interested users (at a cost) their assessments of firms’ environmental (and social) performance. In a world where corpora

31、te environmental performance information is publicly available, it is less clear why firms choose to make voluntary financial report environmental disclosures. One possibility, based on VDT arguments, is that the publicl

32、y available information is incomplete (certainly a realistic possibility) and does not allow investors to adequately assess who the better performers actually are. In this case, as before, better performers disclose to s

33、ignal their superior position. However, a competing argument, legitimacy theory, suggests that companies may use voluntary disclosure to reduce their exposure to social and political costs (Patten, 1991, 1992) by project

34、ing an image of environmental awareness. Proponents of legitimacy theory (including us) argue that this incentive applies in particular to companies with worse environmental performance, and several studies over the past

35、 ten years provide evidence supporting such a relation (e.g., Aerts and Cormier, 2009; Cho et al., 2012a,b; Patten, 2002). Returning to our adaptation of the Thornton base case, we assume, consistent with today’s world (

36、and the world of 1993), that partial environmental performance information is available in the market, and that the preponderance of that data suggests Good is a better environmental performer than Evil. However, again c

37、onsistent with today’s world, while both Good and Evil provide voluntary financial report environmental disclosures, Evil provides a more extensive array of information, particularly focusing on its programs and objectiv

38、es in the environmental domain (see, e.g., Hopwood, 2009). Now we would hope that investors, given access to actual performance data, would discount or even ignore the disclosures provided by Evil. But both experimental

39、(e.g., Milne and Patten, 2002) and empirical (Freedman and Patten, 2004) investigations present evidence that that does not appear to be what happens. Instead, the impacts of negative environmental performance appear to

40、be mitigated, at least to some extent, by the voluntary financial report environmental disclosure. If it were only the misguided investors who would suffer from this misinterpretation of the information being provided, w

41、e would not be5 It is important to note here that we are not assuming that investors would only assess the market effects of environmental performance at this time.Similar to Thornton (1993), we assume (and empirical evi

42、dence suggests – see, e.g., Hughes, 2000; Clarkson et al., 2004) that the market effects ofdifferences in environmental performance are already captured in equity value. What the investors need to assess at this point in

43、 our example is the changein the amount, timing, or certainty of future cash flows owing to the effects of the new regulation. 6 While we are aware that some financial report environmental disclosures are mandatory, ther

44、e is evidence of a large variation in the compliance withsuch regulations across firms but also, and more importantly, a significant lack of enforcement and consequences for non-compliance (Blacconiere andPatten, 1994; C

45、ho and Patten, 2008; Gamble et al., 1995). Therefore, we classify these disclosures to be of voluntary nature as well. 7 MSCI recently purchased the more well-known KLD Research and Analytics, Inc.’s social performance r