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Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management
Vol. 4, No. 2 (June 2002) pp. 123–150
© Imperial College Press
STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
ACCOUNTING: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF CURRENT
CORPORATE PRACTICE AND STRATEGIC INTENT
DAVID GADENNE* and MONIR ZAMAN†
Faculty of Business and Law
Central Queensland University
North Rockhampton 4702, Australia
*d.gadenne@cqu.edu.au
†m.zaman@cqu.edu.au
Received 20 August 2001
Revised 22 March 2002
Accepted 22 March 2002
This paper investigates the current state of corporate Australia’s environmental management
accounting practices and environmental management accountants’ perceptions of how
environmental management accounting information should be accounted for and reported
in the annual report of an environmentally sensitive corporation. The results indicate that
many Australian companies have not yet developed a holistic approach to environmental
costing, and that environmental management accountants believe that environmentally
induced costs and expenses should be reported as notes to financial statements, rather
than in the profit and loss statement in the corporate annual report. However, results are
inconclusive as to whether certain environmentally induced expenditure should be
capitalised and amortised separately in the balance sheet, while there is some support for
environmentally induced end-of-pipe and integrated technologies being recognised
separately as assets in the balance sheet.
Keywords: Corporate environmental posture; environmental cost measurement;
classification; disclosure.
Introduction
In response to increasing concerns by stakeholders, there has been a trend for
many public corporations in recent years to provide more information on
environmental matters both within the management accounting system and the
annual report. Moreover, increased public awareness of environmental issues has
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put pressure on listed corporations to measure environmental costs and expenses
and to dev