Multi-capital accounting, how can sustainability and accounting be hybridised?

Multi-capital accounting is a type of accounting-sustainability hybrid that focuses on integrating sustainability issues into financial accounting. As the standardisation of extra- financial reporting intensifies, they are receiving increasing attention from standard-setters and practitioners, although they have not yet been put into practice in companies. According to the authors of these accounting models, their use would enable organisations to steer and improve their environmental and social performance by integrating sustainability into accounting. However, these models vary considerably in the way they integrate sustainability issues into financial accounting. There have been few research papers on these accounting systems, and none on how integration is achieved. This study contributes to the literature by conceptualising integration as a hybrid. I analyse the link between integration choices and the motivations for changing the accounting paradigm. Laughlin's (1991) theoretical framework of organisational change is applied to the accounting complex. In this paper, I focus on one such multi-capital accounting system, the LIFTS Accounting Model®, which I helped to develop as part of a hybrid research team (practical/academic; accounting/engineering) and which proposes several ways of integrating sustainability into accounting. I question the integration of sustainability into financial accounting by analysing the metaphors evoked and then interpreted by the authors of the LIFTS model. Using a typology of hybridisation from the sciences of hybrid organisations, I propose a typology of hybridisation of sustainability and accounting to better understand these proposals for multi-capital accounting. I then analyse these hybridisations in terms of the motivations underlying the proposal for a multi-capital accounting model and discuss their (in)compatibility.