Accountants' Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Environment: A Correlational Study

摘要

Sustainability accounting reporting is an offshoot of corporate social responsibility. Accounting professionals are now producing sustainability reports. Sustainability accounting reporting is a combination of economic, social, and environmental issues incorporating both financial and nonfinancial elements. Sustainability reports may be assured (certified) by third parties. Recently, the accounting profession has been criticized for failing to prepare proper sustainability reports. To date, there has been no investigation of the social and environmental viewpoints of accountants. The problem this nonexperimental, correlational, quantitative study investigated was Openness to CSR, perceptions of proficiency in sustainability assurance reporting, and environmental attitudes of accountants. The study is important because it provided the first evidence of accountants being pro-environmental. The New Ecological Paradigm was the conceptual framework. Stakeholder and legitimacy theories were included. Stakeholder theory states organizations have a responsibility to those who influence or can be influenced by the organization. Legitimacy theory involves an organization's ability to survive granted by the larger community. The New Ecological Paradigm scale provides a score of environmental worldviews. Corporate social responsibility was addressed using the Openness to CSR scale. Assurance was addressed using a perceptions of assurance scale. A survey method provided data and IBM SPSS Statistics was the analytical tool. The participants were U.S. CPAs. The results indicated CPAs were pro-environmental and younger CPAs were more likely to be pro-environmental. Gender was not found to be statistically significant. Openness to CSR and assurance were not found to be statistically significant. This study has relevance for accounting curricula in universities because sustainability accounting reporting is not addressed currently. Future research should replicate the study when not in tax season. Future research should also address the gap in the literature investigating accountants' gender and age relating to sustainability accounting reporting.