The Role of Accounting Profession in Sustainability Reporting and the Need for Changes in Accounting Education

This study focuses on the role of accounting profession in corporate reporting in terms of generating and publishing information on sustainability issues. The global trend to furnish information on environmental, social and governance issues by companies has provoked university education to update their curricula towards training skilled workers, including accounting staff, who possess such knowledge and skills that will enable them to successfully participate in the process of creating and reporting sustainability information. Over the past ten years there have been a number of publications by researchers on sustainability issues, in particular studies on management reporting on environmental, social and governance factors, as well as comments on existing standards. The methodology of this study is characterized by application of deductive approach and use of quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the condition of teaching subjects related to sustainability issues in universities and higher schools in Bulgaria with economic field of study and majors in accounting. The main research questions being raised are: 1) to what extent the subjects related to corporate sustainability reporting are included in the curricula of majors in the field of accounting and finance; 2) what methods and approaches of teaching are appropriate to be used in the learning process regarding the subjects being explored in this study. The results of the study show that only a few universities in Bulgaria with a field of study in economics teach subjects for corporate sustainability reporting and lay down proposals in this regard.