Management Accounting: Stakeholder Theory and Carbon Disclosure Reporting

Running head: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
MGT723 Research Project
Assessment Task 1: Research Proposal
Student Name: XXX
Your assigned research topic*: Management Accounting: Stakeholder theory
Draft Research Question: What is the effect of stakeholder theory that impacts carbon
disclosure reporting issues within companies?
Title: XXX
Submission Date: XXX

1CONTEMPORARY ISSUES OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
Table of Contents
1. Literature review:...................................................................................................................2
1.1 Practical motivation:........................................................................................................2
1.2 Theoretical motivation:....................................................................................................2
1.3 Stakeholder theory:..........................................................................................................2
1.4 Theoretical constructs:.....................................................................................................3
1.5 Dependent and independent variables:.............................................................................3
2. Conceptual model:.................................................................................................................3
3. Hypothesis:.............................................................................................................................4
4. Proxy Measures for Theoretical Constructs:..........................................................................4
5. Research Method:...................................................................................................................6
References:.................................................................................................................................8
Appendix:...................................................................................................................................9

2CONTEMPORARY ISSUES OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
1. Literature review:
1.1 Practical motivation:
In the literature of accounting, carbon emission is a new concept that has emerged in
the past few years. Since the carbon emissions would have considerable impact on the
business activities and behaviour, the organisations are required to control and restrict carbon
emissions by considering the climate aspects in their business strategy. Hence, it is clearly
evident that the critical sustainability components comprise of carbon emissions and the
practices of reporting could be applied to carbon issues.
1.2 Theoretical motivation:
The influence of disclosure related to carbon emissions is significant on the financial
performance of the business organisations. This has necessitated the need of the firms to lay
emphasis on reducing the environmental issues for assuring economic benefits (Bridoux and
Stoelhorst 2014). The organisations need to represent voluntary and accurate figures related
to carbon emission disclosure, as the shareholders could be able to obtain a true picture of the
actual financial position.
1.3 Stakeholder theory:
Stakeholder theory could be identified as the business ethics and organisational
management theory addressing morals and values in order to manage an organisation. The
stakeholder perspective on strategy combines both market-based view and resource-based
view. According to this theory, it is the responsibility of the business organisations to a
broader group of stakeholders having interests in the organisations (Cordeiro and Tewari
2015). The key stakeholders of an organisation constitute of employees, customers, suppliers,
community and the government.