Sustainability Accounting: Origins, Evolution, and Future

This study analyses the history of sustainability accounting, from its emergence in the 1970s to the modern-day adoption of a global set of industry-specific sustainability accounting standards. Besides, the study navigates sustainability accounting’s noticeable impact on businesses’ seeking of investment, hiring practices, and sales strategies. Generally speaking, finding innovative ways of becoming more sustainable and communicating the improvements well tends to benefit organizations. Larger and more diverse investments can be sought if popular sustainability measures are enacted. Better employees can be attracted and retained by the company, leading to better performance and innovation in future. Customer satisfaction can be maximized, resulting in higher revenues and earnings. In addition, the limitations of sustainability accounting when left in the hands of businesses are further explored with consideration for corporate profit goals and dynamic environmental and economic conditions (such as rising wealth inequality, diminishing union power, elevating global pollution levels, and the like), which are typically left unconsidered. To continue making progress with sustainability, we must push for things such as advancement of unions, better disclosure of information from multiple sources, and overall pressure on corporations to focus on corporate social responsibility over profit.