[雙語翻譯]綠色會計外文翻譯--綠色會計從企業社會責任和環境披露角度反思

1、3150 英文單詞， 英文單詞，1.7 萬英文字符，中文 萬英文字符，中文 5400 字文獻出處： 文獻出處：Cho C H , Patten D M . Green accounting: Reflections from a CSR and environmental disclosure perspective[J]. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2013, 24(6):443-447

2、.Green accounting: Reflections from a CSR and environmental disclosure perspectiveCharles H. Cho, Dennis M. PattenAbstract In this commentary, we reflect on Thornton’s (2013) extension to his original CA Magazine article

3、 on environmental accounting (Thornton, 1993) as well as the original contribution. Given our background in social and environmental disclosure research, we question Thornton’s narrow focus on environmental accounting as

4、 it relates to the debits and credits of financial reporting, and we attempt to illustrate the problems that voluntary environmental disclosure creates with respect to reduced incentives for companies to improve environm

5、ental performance. We conclude by identifying our concerns with the future of environmental accounting given the recent ‘rediscovery’ of the topic by mainstream accounting researchers.Keywords: Environmental; Social; Sus

6、tainability1. IntroductionWe appreciate the opportunity to reflect on, specifically, Thornton’s (1993, 2013) contributions to the debate on environmental accounting, and more generally, on what we see as the concerns tha

7、t environmental (and social) accounting needs to deal with.1 We have carefully read his new exposition and, given its reliance on the original CA Magazine article, we carefully reviewed it as well. Let us state from the

8、beginning, that we agree wholeheartedly with three major points from these works. First, like Thornton (1993, p. 39), we believe that ‘‘we can’t really decide how to do green accounting until we settle some fundamental,

9、epistemological issues of what we are supposed to account for’’ (and we do not believe we have much chance of ever settling those issues). Second, we concur that the asset retirement obligation (ARO) accounting requireme

10、nts now in place are an improvement over the situation that existed when Thornton first discussed environmental accounting. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for our argument, we agree with Thornton (1993, p. 37) tha

11、t ‘‘information is never perfect.’’ Where we differ, and this perhaps relates back to agreement number one, is on what we see as within the purview of the accounting domain.As Thornton (1993, p. 34) noted in his origi

12、nal piece, he was going to do something he saw as unique to articles dealing with green accounting, he was ‘‘going to talk about accounting.’’ As he explains in his update, what he meant was that he actually got into the

13、 debits and credits that would be needed to bring companies’ environmental responsibilities into the accounting system, and for the most part, that is what he again focuses on in the new article. To him, accounting appea

14、rs to be limited to what gets captured in the financial statements. But we are researchers in corporate environmental disclosure – almost always focusing on information that gets provided not through the financial statem

15、ents, but instead through other means such as narratives in annual reports, disclosures on company websites, and more recently, provision of information through stand-alone corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.

16、We can understand, given that very little research into corporate environmental reporting predated Thornton’s first exposition,2 that his view of accounting back in the early 1990s was so limited. However, in that both e

17、nvironmental disclosure research, and the practice itself, have increased dramatically over the past two decades, course, disagree. Gray (2010, p. 49) cites Morgan (1988, p. 480) in noting:. . .[accounts] are always enga

18、ged in interpreting a complex reality, partially, and in a way that is heavily weighted in favour of what the accountant is able to measure and chooses to measure, through the particular scheme of accounting to be adopte

19、d.He further cites Abercrombie et al. (1984, p. 13) to make the case that ‘‘the language by which people justify their behavior when challenged by another social actor . . . is an ‘account’’’ (Gray, 2010, p. 47). As such

20、, we argue that information companies voluntarily choose to provide through, originally, disclosures in their annual reports, and more recently, through websites and stand-alone CSR reports, represent attempts to ‘accoun

21、t’ for their environmental (and social) behaviors, and as such, are very much within the realm of ‘accounting’. Unfortunately, many of the problems we had with the voluntary environmental disclosure of twenty years ago r

22、emain unchanged today, and we would like to expand Thornton’s (1993) original base case to illustrate our concerns.3. An expansion of the Thornton (1993) exampleLet’s assume, instead of a single oil company, a market con

23、sisting of two competing firms. Let’s call them Good and Evil, and let’s assume that at the start of period i they are both valued in the market at $1,000,000. Now let’s assume the government imposes new regulations desi

24、gned to reduce the harmful effects of oil company activities on the environment. The market must now assess its beliefs about the cost of the new regulations on each firm, E[$GGood], E[$GEvil] (for the sake of simplicity

25、, we note this ‘cost’ includes all other potential changes in future cash flows – that is, it includes what Thornton laid out as $x and $y, as well as any potential product price changes that could be imposed to offset t

26、hese costs). Because the regulations are meant to reduce harmful effects, we can assume that $G will be higher for the firm whose operations are more harmful, and as such, information on each company’s environmental perf

27、ormance would appear potentially to have value relevance.One potential source of environmental performance information is the disclosures companies voluntarily choose to provide in their financial reports.6 Proponents of

28、 voluntary disclosure theory (VDT) argue that companies choose to provide voluntary financial report environmental disclosures due to information asymmetry between managers and investors. Better performers, they argue, w

29、ant to signal to the market their superior position through disclosure, while worse performers will choose to remain silent and as such, be judged an ‘‘average-type’’ firm (Clarkson et al., 2008, p. 304). This interpreta

30、tion of the choice to disclose is perfectly logical in a world where no other sources of companies’ environmental performance are publicly available. But that does not include the investing world in, for example, North A

31、merica. In the U.S., most manufacturing firms and utilities are required to provide to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annual estimates of toxics released into the environment and the EPA makes this information

32、 publicly available. Information on other air and water pollution performance issues is also available through the EPA (see, e.g., Hughes, 2000; Clarkson et al., 2004). Similar reporting is required by companies in Canad

33、a through the National Pollutant Release Inventory managed by Environment Canada. There are also proprietary firms such as MSCI,7 Sutainalytics or Trucost that use this data, and information gathered from other sources,

34、to make available to interested users (at a cost) their assessments of firms’ environmental (and social) performance.In a world where corporate environmental performance information is publicly available, it is less cle