Eldenburg & Wolcott, Cost Management 1e
Integrating Across the Curriculum Problems
Chapter 7
Integrating Across the Curriculum: Corporate Social Responsibility Environmental accounting
reports, ABC and ABM for environmental costs Many countries provide motivation for businesses to produce environmental accounting reports. For example, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in the United Kingdom developed the European EnvironmentalReporting Awards program in 1997. Currently 12 countries, including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany, participate in this program. In Japan, the Global Environmental Forum and the National Association for the Promotion of Environmental Conservation have given “Environmental Report Awards” since 1997. In addition, Toyo Keizai and Green Reporting Forum have given a Green Reporting Award since 1998. These awards encourage businesses to take responsibility for environmental conditions that affect society’s wellbeing.
Conduct research about corporate environmental disclosures. Choose one company located in Japan and a competitor located in the United States. Go to each company’s Web site and search
for information about environmental policies and procedures. Two possible companies are Canon
( and Kodak (
Also conduct research to find governmental guidelines for environmental accounting. Go to the Web site of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( and search for information about environmental accounting. Now perform a similar search on the Web site of Japan’s Ministry of the Environment ( Skim through the information that you find on each Web site. These links are also available at
In its “Environmental Accounting Guidelines 2002,” Japan’s Ministry of the Environment identified the following environmental conservation cost categories:
Category Content
REQUIRED: 1
A. Is environmental accounting an ethical issue? Why or why not?
B. Which company provides the easiest-to-find and most understandable information about environmental policies and procedures? Explain.
C. Discuss a company’s responsibilities for reporting environmental information to various stakeholders, including shareholders, managers, employees, other companies, government regulators, product customers, and the general public.
D. If one company provides better reporting than a competitor of its environmental behavior, policies, and procedures, does that mean the company is more responsible than its competitor toward the environment? Why or why not?
E. What factors are likely to affect a company’s willingness to publish an environmental accounting report?
F. Discuss possible reasons why the governments of different countries place different degrees of emphasis on environmental accounting reports.
G. Discuss ways in which ABC systems could be used to capture information for environmental accounting reports.
H. Discuss ways in which the process of preparing and publishing an environmental accounting report is likely to help a company reduce its environmental costs.
I. Should all governments require companies to publish environmental accounting reports? What values did you use to arrive at your conclusion?