Environmental Management Accounting: Informational and Institutional Developments

Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) is increasingly recognised as a distinguished tool of environmental management. It helps to integrate a company's environmental and business interests, whereby enhancing corporate eco-efficiency in terms of reducing environmental costs or making one's product more competitive.

This book gives a comprehensive coverage of the state of the art. It presents a number of EMA frameworks that companies can take as a basis for implementing their own specific EMA structures. Besides discussing environmental accounting issues within conventional management accounting, it gives a detailed picture of materials flow (cost) accounting as an alternative way of looking at the ecology-economy relationships at the corporate level. A fascinating case study shows how a large company (Siemens) applies materials flow accounting and what benefits it entails.

Twenty-two contributions address contemporary environmental management accounting (EMA), which aims to to integrate a company's environmental and business interests. Written by professors of environmental and business management, consultants with private industry and institutions, and others, the contributions are organized into four sections: overviews (discussion of the relationship between financial and physical figures in EMA and materials flow approach as a possible new paradigm); information systems (a variety of contextual variables); EMA policies (including governmental initiatives, social and private perspectives, environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, conformity with institutional frameworks, and government organization applications); and various EMA perspectives. There is no subject index. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR