The impact of environmental management accounting and corporate social responsibility on firm performance

Abstract

The lack of ability of conventional management accounting systems to provide full environmental/social cost information as well as low level of managers‘ understanding of the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) have caused decisions and firm performance appraisal to be based on missing, inaccurate or misinterpreted information. This study aims to (1) answer whether more complete environmental/social cost information through employing EMA and CSR could bring higher level of performance for firms, and (2) determine the barriers which hinder firms from implementing EMA and CSR. Quantitative method was employed in this study. Data were collected by using questionnaires distributed to 452 (58 responded) Bursa Malaysia listed companies in industrial and consumer product sectors and then the data were analyzed using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique and Partial Least Squares (PLS) method. The findings show that the level of EMA is relatively higher than CSR among participated firms, while the level of CSR is at the average level. The results of path analysis show that CSR has positive effects on both financial and non-financial performance, while EMA has only positive and significant effects on process innovation as one of the non-financial performance dimensions. In addition, the managers have determined that rigidity of legislation and bureaucratic complexity, and reduced employee participation in decision-making are the most important external and internal barriers respectively in implementing EMA and CSR as two environmental management practices.