Accountability for sustainability: an approach beyond the accounting mainstream

Abstract

The study discusses how the accounting area is responding to the challenges of accountability and sustainability, and with that, how accounting can contribute to the debate and promotion of sustainable development. In this way, the thesis contributes to the accounting literature by providing a better understanding of the role of accounting in the culture of accountability, as a tool to support organizations in achieving their goals. This research excels in the search for understandings that best fit the current social and economic reality. Therefore, the objective of the study is to carry out an analysis of how the accounting mainstream makes it difficult for disruptive understandings of accountability and sustainability to be disseminated both in a practical and scientific way in accounting. In this research we discuss how accounting can contribute to the sustainable development of organizations, and how the Theory of Planned Behavior is a useful tool for the accounting debate and promotion of this kind of development. The thesis consists of the gathering of four articles, two of a reflective theoretical nature, which address the onto-epistemological context that involves the accounting mainstream, one of a bibliographic nature, aimed at understanding the conceptual and theoretical developments related to the theme, and one empirical study, which analyzes how the subject reveals itself with the accounting practice. As a result, the research demonstrates that accounting is a fundamental tool for organizations in developing their business strategies and achieving sustainable performance in the short, medium and long term. The research concludes that accountability is an important aspect of sustainable development and that accounting can play an important role in promoting accountability.