What is the stock of the situation? A bibliometric analysis on social and environmental accounting research in public sector

• Pages: 21-41
• Published date: 14 January 2019
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-05-2017-0134
• Date: 14 January 2019
• Author: Floriana Fusco,Paolo Ricci
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management

What is the stock of the situation?

A bibliometric analysis on social

and environmental accounting

research in public sector

Floriana Fusco

Department of Law, Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods,

University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy, and

Paolo Ricci

Department of Political Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the state of the art insocial and environmental

accounting research applied to the public sector, highlighting different streams and the main gaps in current

literature and providing input for future research.

Design/methodology/approach –A bibliometric method was used to analyse the characteristics, citation

patterns and content of 38 papers published in international academic journals.

Findings –The findings show that the research on social and environmental reporting in the public sector is

still at an early stage. Current investigations, although slowly on the increase, are still very few and localised.

Most papers are about the reasons why public organisations report, what and how they report, but there are

so many aspects that need to be investigated more in-depth or require extra validation in order to open

new directions for future research, among which the relationship with and the differences between other

non-financial type of reporting, namely ICR and IR.

Research limitations/implications –The study shows some limitations, mainly related to the adoption of

the bibliometric method. Indeed, it does not take into account books and chapters but only papers published

in international and academic journals. This leads to exclude a significant part of the existing literature and

other relevant contributions on the field.

Originality/value –Social and environmental reporting practices are quickly spreading in the public sector.

The field is particularly interesting, given the specific connotations of this kind of organisations. However,

the literature is clearly not exhaustive and there is not a comprehensive and systematic review of the state of

the art on the subject.

Keywords Public sector, Sustainability reporting, Social and environmental reporting,

Bibliometrics analysis, SEAR

Paper type Literature review

Nomenclature

SEAR Social and Environmental

Accounting Research

SER Social and Environmental Reporting

PSOs Public Sector Organisations

CSR Corporate Social Responsibility

SR Sustainability Reporting

IR Integrated Reporting

ICR Intellectual Capital Reporting

1. Introduction

International literature has clearly highlighted how the demand for greater accountability

involves not only companies, but also politics, non-profit organisations and public

administrations, and their relationship with stakeholders and society as a whole. In

particular, it has been shown that the increase in the demand for accountability and

transparency mainly concerns social and environmental issues. This has led to an

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 32 No. 1, 2019

pp. 21-41

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-05-2017-0134

Received 29 May 2017

Revised 10 November 2017

22 January 2018

Accepted 18 February 2018

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0951-3558.htm

21

Social and

environmental

accounting

research

increasing interest in non-traditional and non-financial reporting practices that are

able to account for the social and environmental impact of organisations and their

contribution to sustainable development (Unerman et al., 2007). Locutions used to identify

these tools are many –i.e. Social report, Social and Environmental Report (SER),

Sustainability Report (SR) –but nevertheless some initial differences, these terms have

become interchangeable; in fact, in the present study we use either “SR”or “SER”.

Despite social and environmental accounting research (SEAR) being traditionally

focussed on the private sector, it has recently turned its attention on the public sector.

The same can be said about the practices that are quickly spreading thanks also to

encouragement of different international (see GRI[1]) and national (see GBS in Italy)

frameworks. Nevertheless, the “public agency sustainability reporting is undeniably still in

its infancy”(Dickinson et al., 2005, p. 5) and its potential is overlooked (Ball and Grubnic,

2007), also due to doubts about its applicability to public organisations. We think however it

is not only possible but also necessary to apply these kind of reporting. Obviously, it would

not be wise to replicate unconditionally patterns and models of the private sector, but it is

necessary to research and practise a distinctive agenda (Ball and Grubnic, 2007; Ball and

Bebbington, 2008), which takes into account the typical nature of the public sector.

First of all, the public nature of the subjects analysed means that social responsibility

and therefore SER cannot be an ethical and residual option. This is even clearer for those

entities whose specific mission is inherent to social, sustainability or environmental

conservation issues. As the institutional purpose of all public organisations is a social one, it

can be inferred that also their reports, which are about the use of common resources to

generate benefits for the community, must be social by definition. Indeed, this characteristic

means that SRs sometimes constitute the only effective communication tool regarding the

activities carried out, given the strong informative limits of an exclusively economic and

financial reporting. It should also be taken into account that the relationships with

stakeholders are here much more complex and layered, an example of that being the

relationship with citizens/voters/taxpayers who are often also consumers (Ricci, 2016).

Moreover, the role played by the public sector is twofold: on the one hand, it encourages

the adoption of instruments and socially responsible behaviours by private entities, as part

of the functions of regulation and control of economic and social activities; on the other

hand, it inevitably strengthens the determination to adopt social responsibility principles in

the management, production and provision of public goods and services, as well as the

reporting on these aspects (Albareda et al., 2007; Guthrie and Farneti, 2008). In this regard, it

is necessary to stress that the public sector has since the 90 s been pushed towards

focussing on economic and financial targets and responsibilities, on efficiency rather than

on effectiveness and –above all –equity. The global financial crisis whose aftermath still

grips the West has increased the pressure in this direction, which will inevitably end up

aggravating the fragility of the public sphere. However, a long-lasting global economic

recovery will necessarily require a more sustainable approach, not only from a financial

point of view, but especially from a social one. Adding the inability of mere accrual or

financial accounting to explain and manage “the sophistication of the public governance of

the fragmented state”(Osborne and Ball, 2010, p. 4), it will be possible to imagine what is

needed in terms of “new directions in the theory and practice of accountability”for the

public sector which are, of course, those of social and environmental reporting (Osborne and

Ball, 2010; Guthrie et al., 2010).

Along this approach, the present studyaims to carry out a bibliometric analysis of current

literature on SEAR in the public sector, to check and assess the state of the art on the topic,

providinginsights on the main findingsand gaps. This comes not only fromthe willingness to

examine suchan important and interestingissue, but also –and above all –from the f act it is a

privileged way to drawthe direction for future developments.In this regard, wondering what

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