Social and Environmental Accounting (SEA) Research in the Public Sector: The Portuguese Case

Abstract

Research on environmental accounting and reporting practices has been centred on private corporations (Mathews 2004; Parker 2005; Milne and Gray 2007). In public sector organisations only little research has been carried out (Ball and Grubnic 2007; Ball and Bebbignton 2008; Farneti and Guthrie 2009; Gray et al. 2009; Guthrie et al. 2010). Literature shows there is a lack of empirical research on public social and environmental accounting (SEA) and most studies are largely focused on an Anglo-Saxon context and more specifically on countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (Gibson and Guthrie 1995; Burritt and Welch 1997; Frost and Toh 1998; Frost and Seamer 2002; McElroy et al. 2005; Qian et al. 2011). Within the Portuguese context, little evidence is available related to public SEA (Veronica 2007; Ribeiro and Guzman 2010. Ribeiro et al. 2016a). In fact, there is no tradition of such empirical research in Portugal, particularly in the public sector. Thus, our study aims to enrich the international literature on SEA in public entities by providing a snapshot of Portugal’s situation, where empirical evidence is still relatively unknown. Some studies suggest that accountants are involved in the SEA process in public entities, but there is still some room for improvement (Williams et al. 2010; Williams 2015). This paper also examines the ways in which professional accountants can encourage and support public entities to increase the low-level of sustainability accounting and reporting practices.