Editorial Notes Embracing the Demands of Scholarship?

Abstract

As researchers and teachers working in and around social, environmental (and perhapssustainability) accounting we enjoy a remarkably wide range of potential areas to explore.This range is matched by a startlingly diverse range of objectives that we, asscholars, can adopt.

We might see our objects of enquiry and investigation through the narrow lens of whatthe accounting profession currently thinks “accounting” is (Hopwood, 2007; Lee,1990) and examine only those manifestations of the social and environmental world(what Thielemann (2000) calls, “market alien values”) that can be reflected in theparadigms of conventional accounting: assets, liabilities, expenses, revenues, profitsetc. There is much to be done here, of course. Alternatively, we might have steppedoutside the fetters of conventional accounting – for reasons of personal preference,because there is no a priori justification for being so constrained and/ or perhaps becausewe might see conventional accounting as part of the problem and not necessarilypart of the solution. Whatever our motive, such a liberated view of our subject matteris both exciting and highly daunting: all of human endeavour can be seen as comprisingrelationships, accountabilities and the giving and receiving of accounts

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