Summary of Academic Articles

Running head: SUMMARY OF ACADEMIC ARTICLES
SUMMARY OF ACADEMIC ARTICLES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

SUMMARY OF ACADEMIC ARTICLES1
In the article written by Judy Brown and Michael Fraser, the importance of “corporate
social responsibility (CSR)” and “social and environmental accounting (SEA)” has been
highlighted. CSR and SEA have been the topics of interest among businesses, governments,
investors, policymakers and environmentalists too for instance (Brown and Fraser 2006). They
speak about how the business case approach, stakeholder-accountability approach and critical
theory approach differ. Organisations should be held accountable for the impact that they have
on the economic and social environment. Accountability is an obligation to provide an account
that may or may not be financial. It is a way in which organisations are made to be answerable to
the stakeholders, as the reports do not provide proper information. It helps them portray the ideas
and take decisions with the stakeholders that would otherwise have been a difficult job to do.
Thus, accountability needs the organisations to be responsive and help increase the corporate
performance along the way (Brown and Fraser 2006). The employees, consumers and the
communities have the right to know before they can apply for rewards and sanctions.
Accountability can only be effective when the stakeholders are empowered that they can hold the
accountors liable.
In addition to being accountable financially, organisations should be held socially and
environmentally accountable as well. This helps in producing outcomes that can be debated.
Thee interests of all the stakeholders should be taken into account. Every organisation should be
invested in compulsory reporting as well as independently auditing the economic, social and
environmental aspects (Cooper and Owen 2007). Though environmental and social reporting are
certainly new concepts when compared to financial reporting, a lot of issues have been raised
that include the end-result, the goal of the organisation, the quality of information and the
audience. Instead of being accountable and transparent, the managements should focus the