Context for the Special Issue
This special issue aims at collecting innovative, path-breaking papers with rigorous arguments, analyses and concepts on the role accounting can or does play to help management to make substantive, effective contributions (Heras‐Saizarbitoria et al., 2021) to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and possible future scenarios.
The SDGs are aspirational for the world in relation to sustainability targets for societies, economies and companies. Comprising 17 goals, 169 targets and multiple indicators, the SDGs were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 “as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity” (UNDP, 2021, p. 1).
Guidance for authors
Submissions (with a max. 12,000 words length) are welcome from all research genres including: disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, logical argumentation and analytical, conceptual and applied, qualitative and quantitative methods, predictive, interpretive, emancipatory, and deconstructive.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Accounting support for building awareness about and creating management action for the sustainability themes addressed by the SDGs
- Accounting support for management to set adequate priorities for the sustainability engagement of the organisation (to evade cherry-picking and the omission of key topics)
- Theoretical perspectives explaining how or why SDGs are considered (or not considered) in the accounting systems of an organisation
- Accounting help in pursuing contributions to different SDGs in an integrative manner
- Accounting systems in corporate supply or value chains for managing contributions to the SDGs
- SDG-related accounting systems, indicators and measures of multinational enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or entrepreneurial ventures and how they are linked
- Formal versus informal measuring, monitoring and management control approaches for achieving SDGs by corporations
- Accounting as a network motivator of (fast) transformative contributions towards SDGs through networks (e.g., in professional accounting organisations), markets and governments
- Accounting as an organization internal motivator of different types of manager (e.g., top management, divisional managers, production managers, logistics managers) towards achieving the SDGs
- Behavioural implications linked to setting up SDG-related accounting, measurement and assessment approaches
- Accounting contributions to management of SDG achievement in different countries, industries, and types and sizes of business.
- Sustainability management accounting as a management communication mechanism align the organization and target the SDGs
- Accounting and strategic and operational planning and control for SDG achievement
- The role of accounting in mapping the internal-external interface between the corporation and SDGs
- The role accounting in responsible business management of the SDGs etc.
Tentative Schedule:
Submission deadline: 28 February 2022
First round of review feedback: by 31 May 2022
Further review rounds completed by: End April 2023
Final decisions on manuscripts: Early May 2023
Planned publication: Issue 4 of 2023 – early August 2023
Submissions for the special issue will be made through Meditari’s ScholarOne platform:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/medar.
To view the author guidelines for this journal, please visit the following webpage: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/medar#author-guidelines.
