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Sustainability Accounting and Education: Conflicts and Possibilities

  • Rob GrayEmail author
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Abstract

Accounting education has a long history of successfully resisting ideas and innovations which may fundamentally challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. Whilst it is just about possible to adopt an understanding of sustainability which does not challenge fundamental assumptions about economy, capitalism and accounting, it is arguably the duty of education to encourage the exploration of such challenges. This chapter briefly reviews these contentions and then, having offered a review of approaches to sustainability accounting, suggests how educators might approach the question of how disruptive a sustainability accounting education might be. The underlying theme of the chapter is that if the educator and the student are not feeling uncomfortable and fundamentally challenged, then we are probably not looking at either sustainability or education.

Keywords

Accounting Cognitive dissonance Challenge Weak and strong sustainability Beliefs 
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© The Author(s) 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of St AndrewsSt AndrewsUK

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