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Exploring the Effects of Sustainability on Accounting Information Systems: The Role of SBSC

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Network, Smart and Open

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 24))

Abstract

In the last twenty years the companies and governments (see the recent directive—2014/95/EU) paid increasing attention to sustainability issues: they gained strategic relevance for the business and deserved interest of stakeholders. According to these sustainability information needs, academics and practitioners examined the development of new accounting information systems (AISs), aimed to collect, elaborate and integrate environmental and social data. In this paper, we consider the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (SBSC), considering it as an urge to develop and integrate the AISs. The aim of this paper, through a case study, is to investigate the role of SBSC and try to highlight a relationship between the different designs of SBSC proposed by literature and different levels of integration of AISs. This work provides a theoretical contribution to the debate on accounting information system for sustainability and offers useful reflections for the practitioners about the potentialities and critical aspects of SBSC.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We selected this case from AIDA, the Bureau van Dijk database. Among 25 listed Italian energy, water and environmental enterprises selected, only 10 draw up a sustainability report and only five of these adopted, or was starting to adopt, the SBSC (Hera, Terna, A2A, ERG, Iren).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy

    Katia Corsi & Brunella Arru

Authors
  1. Katia Corsi
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  2. Brunella Arru
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Correspondence to Katia Corsi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Parthenope University of Naples, Naples, Italy

    Rita Lamboglia

  2. University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Andrea Cardoni

  3. University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Renata Paola Dameri

  4. Parthenope University of Naples, Naples, Italy

    Daniela Mancini

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Corsi, K., Arru, B. (2018). Exploring the Effects of Sustainability on Accounting Information Systems: The Role of SBSC. In: Lamboglia, R., Cardoni, A., Dameri, R., Mancini, D. (eds) Network, Smart and Open. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62636-9_16

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