Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Basically, in the first two chapters, we looked into the development of accounting from merely
‘stewardship’ to ‘accountability’; and the widening aspect of accountability to include the aspect of
financial, social and environmental of the business organisation that are labelled as sustainability.
Based on our readings and discussions (Brennan, 2008; Aras & Crowther, 2008), it appears that good
governance may assist organisations in achieving sustainability. The broadening frontier of corporate
governance and accountability’s concepts and mechanisms that shifted toward the stakeholders’
perspective have signified the sustainability perspective in a corporation. The topic of sustainability
accounting/ social and environmental accounting itself is covered in Chapter 8, under one of aspect
of Non-Conventional Accounting. What is conventional vs non-conventional accounting? You should
be able to respond to the question and analyse how the conventional accounting is different from
the non-conventional accounting, in term of their conceptual framework and application of various
theories (e.g. economic theories, political and social theories, etc.).
Does conceptual framework refer to accounting theory? And how accounting theories relate to
practice? In order to respond to the question, you need to revise on the definition, components and
uses/functions of accounting theory and conceptual framework. This can be referred back to Chapter
3, on the scope and role of accounting theory. In that chapter, we have been exposed to the
development of accounting theory, the ways of accounting theories are formulated, tested,
constructed and measured. We focused more on the normative and descriptive approach to the
development of accounting theory and highlighted the differences between positivistic, interpretive
and critical research research (See attachments for sample of those research).
In addition, we also learnt about the needs for accounting regulation, discussed from various
perspectives, such as Theory of Efficient Market, Agency Theory and Theory of Regulation in Chapter
4. Several theoretical perspectives used in the accounting disclosure literature are also emphasised.
You should be able to cover both financial and non-financial aspect of accounting disclosure, when
discussing the theoretical perspectives.
Coming back to the conceptual framework, you must understand about the arguments for and
against having a conceptual framework for accounting.
Before, we deepen our knowledge on the topic of sustainability accounting (Chapter 8), let us first
explore on the Conventional Accounting.