Conjoining public goods, sustainable development and business accountability, Dr Roland Bardy
Dr Roland Bardy
Wittenberg Center for Global Ethics and Florida Gulf Coast University
United States
Purpose: Presenting a linkage between performance measurement at the business level and the concept of public goods usage, and a linkage between the micro- and macro-economic aspects of sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach: Exhibiting the essentials of a public goods cost perspective in order to agitate discussion between statisticians, standard-setters for business reporting and practitioners who wish to explore new approaches in the topic of building performance indicators.
Findings: Showing what has been achieved in measuring the outcomes of sustainable development eff orts and what still needs to be done in order to arrive at aggregate values for national and global commons.
Research limitations/implications: Linking performance measurement at the business level to public goods usage will depend on the cooperation of businesses and national statistics whichtest the feasibility of monetary indicators for both the micro- and the macro-levels through numerical studies
Practical implications: For practitioners in both the statistics profession and management accounting who are concerned with measurement of socioeconomic and environmental phenomena, this attempt at integrating sustainable development indicators and the managerial control system of companies might provide a valuable proposition. It also is a helpful contribution to the ongoing debate about the value and credibility of sustainability reporting.
Social implications: If businesses make no attempts to exhibit numerically how they contribute to preserve and expand the societal
commons, they will be confronted with ever-growing agitation from pressure groups and they might be bypassed in the discussion on the issue of sustainability parameters that those groups are advocating.
Originality/value: This is the fi rst academic paper that demonstrates a reporting model which unites business accounts and national accounts.
Keywords: public goods; sustainable development; business accountability; valuation; externalities; corporate performance.
Citation: Bardy, R. (2016): Conjoining public goods, sustainable development and business accountability. In Ahmed, A. (Ed.): Europe at a Crossroads and the Impact of Globalization, Vol. 14, pp. 395-409.
