James Hazelton

Macquarie University · Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance

Objectives of socially responsible investment (SRI) are discussed with reference to the two main mechanisms of the SRI 'movement': shareholder advocacy and managed investments. We argue that in their current forms, both mechanisms lack the power to create significant corporate change. Shareholder advocacy has been largely unsuccessful to date. Even...

Purpose ‐ This paper aims to respond to increasing interest in the intersection between accounting and human rights and to explore whether access to information might itself constitute a human right. As human rights have "moral force", establishing access to information as a human right may act as a catalyst for policy change. The paper also aims t...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of potential users about water accounting reports prepared under Australian general purpose water accounting (GPWA), which applies financial accounting techniques to water and could be extended to other areas of natural resource management. In particular, the paper examines the exten...

In decades since the Rio Summit, freshwater has become an increasingly prominent issue in the global arena and attention has turned to the role of the corporate sector. Various (predominantly voluntary) corporate water accounting standards currently exist, from water-related components in wide-ranging sustainability standards such as the Global Rep...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the potential for the labelling of the water footprint of products in an Australian context. It considers theoretical contribution and technical challenges of water labelling and in particular how non-fungible water extractions might be evaluated and communicated. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examine...

Purpose This study aims to evaluate the quality of the energy efficiency disclosures made by Australian cities. As cities are significant energy users, and energy use is a crucial source of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency initiatives can play an essential role in addressing climate change. Yet, little is understood about the energy effi...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the extent to which global reporting initiative (GRI) standards reflect the material concerns of stakeholders in developing countries, with particular reference to Latin America. Design/methodology/approach The main dataset was a sample of 120 media articles that discussed corporate conduct related to COVID-19 fr...

Purpose This paper aims to examine whether the disclosure obligations in areas of water stress required under the revised Global Reporting Initiative standard (GRI) 303 Water and Effluents, 2018 will improve the quality of corporate water reporting. As a key new requirement is to disclose the impact of water withdrawals from (and discharges to) are...

Purpose – This paper furthers research into the potential contribution of pollutant databases for corporate accountability by evaluating the quality of corporate and government mercury reporting via the Australian National Pollutant Inventory (NPI). The NPI underpins Australia’s reporting under the Minamata Convention, a global agreement to reduce...

Accounting for the Circular Economy within Cities Call for papers for: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal Guest Editors: Cristiana Parisi, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, cp.om@cbs.dk Johannes Dumay, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Australia, john.dumay@mq.edu.au James Hazelton, Macquarie Business School, Macquar...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the extent to which technology and disruption has been considered within the accounting literature, to introduce the five papers which compose this special issue and to provide an agenda for future research on technology and disruption. Design/methodology/approach To explore previous works on the disruptive poten...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to encourage and advance interdisciplinary accounting research on economic inequality. Design/methodology/approach: The authors review prior research into economic inequality, including two new papers in this issue, to identify topics where economic inequality and accounting research intersect. The authors the...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how mandatory sustainability accounts can be designed to maximise the likelihood of moving society towards sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The authors use institutional theory to show that organisations are constrained by institutions. Sustainability accounts can drive change by prov...

Purpose – A primary tool for managing the democratic risks posed by political donations is disclosure. In Australia, corporate donations are disclosed in government databases. Despite the potential accountability benefits, corporations are not, however, required to report this information in their annual or stand-alone reports. We investigate the q...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by megacities. Three dimensions were considered. First, what communication channels are used by world megacities to disclose their emissions reduction target (ERT) and emissions reduction actions (ERA)? Second, the consistency of disclosed ERT and ERA across differ...

Groundwater is a critical resource both worldwide and in Australia and, although groundwater information is central to its effective management, it is generally poor. General Purpose Water Accounting (GPWA), an innovative Australian system developed to account for water resources based on financial accounting principles, has been identified as a po...

One of the activities corporations should be accountable for is their level of political donations. This paper examines two mandatory corporate political donation disclosure regimes in Australia and identifies three important lessons. First, our review confirms that although few citizens may care enough to scrutinise donation disclosure, there are...

ABSTRACT This essay reviews the potential of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) to inform social accounting research into economic inequality. Economic inequality is conceptually central to social accounting agendas, yet there has been surprisingly little accounting research in this...

This study explores the extent and quality of localised mining water-related disclosures from the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW). The data set provides an atypical opportunity to study voluntary and mandatory environmental reporting, as mining companies often produce their own voluntary sustainability reports, yet some mandatory reportin...

This paper applies a utilitarian analysis to corporate political donations. Unlike the more common rights-based analyses, it is argued that the optimal policy is the one that best satisfies society’s rational preferences concerning donor influence, adequate financing, donor pressure and the cost of maintaining and enforcing the democratic system. T...

This paper advocates inclusion of a wider set of ethical theories into the accounting canon. We find that the mainstream accounting curriculum does not adequately engage with non-Western ethical theories or contemporary Western ethical thought, as evidenced by the ethics content of core accounting texts and the International Federation of Accountan...

This paper identifies the challenges associated with engaging staff in curriculum change, using the context of systematic inclusion of ethics in the accounting curriculum of a major Australian metropolitan university, and offers some suggestions as to how these challenges might be overcome. We characterize the inclusion of ethics in the accounting...

Our brief was to analyse the impact of previous reporting standardisation initiatives and to suggest implications for standardised water accounting (SWA). We selected seven initiatives for our review: 1. Financial reporting; 2. International "nancial reporting convergence; 3. Public sector accruals reporting; 4. Sustainability reporting by organis...

This paper chronicles the journey of two projects that sought to incorporate principles of sustainable development into predominantly technical postgraduate accounting curricula. The design and delivery of the projects were informed by Freirian principles of praxis and critical empowerment. The first author introduced sustainability-related materia...

Purpose – This poem aims to explore corporate ideology. Design/methodology/approach – It is a fictional poem. Findings – The poem suggests that a capitalist perspective diminishes social and environmental possibility. Research limitations/implications – The poem invites renewed reflection on the influence of corporate values. Originality/value – Th...

This paper chronicles an action research project seeking to incorporate the principles of sustainability into higher education. Both researchers are lecturers in accounting departments in Australian universities and implemented changes in the accounting curriculum. Researcher one introduced sustainability-related material as part of a core technica...

We consider whether public corporations can be ethical, using the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We distinguish between ‘weak’ CSR (where corporate profitability is enhanced by pursuing social and environmental objectives) and ‘strong’ CSR (where it is not) and consider four possible positions in relation to strong CSR. First, CSR...

This paper chronicles an action research project seeking to incorporate the principles of sustainability into higher education. Both researchers are lecturers in accounting departments in Australian universities and implemented changes in the accounting curriculum. Researcher one introduced sustainability-related material as part of a core technica...