Multi-capital accounting for planetary boundaries and social foundations

Seminar summary

Organisational research has developed a wealth of research on grand challenges (Ferraro et al. 2015; George et al. 2016). However, there is scarce literature on how systemic views of those grand challenges are made calculable, notably for example, how the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or the planetary boundaries framework, are translated into organisational practice (Bebbington and Unerman, 2020). The second problem raised by accounting for those systemic frameworks is the necessity to embrace the complexity and interconnectedness of the different issues at stake. Grand challenges are systemic and evolving problems that do not land themselves easily to linear causal mechanisms (Ferraro et al., 2015). Therefore, we investigate how new organizational calculative technologies and practices may affect our conceptualisations of the future, namely, our future in a “safe and just space for humanity” (Raworth, 2017). This future state is a desired and aspired to state of “sustainable development” that is also admitted being a utopia, as no countries around the world manages to sit into that safe and just space as of today.

The purpose of this paper is consequently to critically examine the development of an accounting tool for sustainable development (Bebbington and Larrinaga, 2014) rooted in the doughnut concept (Raworth, 2017), and how it may provide perceptions of calculability of global challenges at organisational level. We use the “doughnut” as a representation of the conditions to maintain a “safe and just operating space for humanity” (Raworth, 2017). Indeed, we need to translate planetary boundaries because “human choices and actions could narrow or widen the safe and just corridor for human development” (Rockström et al. 2021). According to Thomson (2020), “without the future state of socio-ecological systems after the decision, it is difficult to reflect on the quality of any calculative choices made”.

This research is based on an auto-ethnography of a multi-year research program to develop an integrated multi-capital accounting tool. Under the leadership of the main researcher (first author), a group of seven members, including a practitioner, senior researchers, and PhD students, researched how to render the “doughnut” calculable for organisations, while integrating the accounts within financial accounting practices.

We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, we believe we contribute to the literature on accounting “for” sustainable development, initiated by Bebbington and Larrinaga (2014) by conceptualising an organisational calculative infrastructure for the “doughnut”. Second, we develop an understanding of how you may, or may not, render grand challenges frameworks such as the SDGs, or the planetary boundaries, calculable at the organisational level (Bebbington and Unerman, 2020).

How to attend this seminar

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

We welcome you to join us online on Wednesday 17 May 2023 at 2pm.

Speaker bio

Professor Delphine Gibassier

Professor Delphine Gibassier is a sustainable development accounting associate professor at Audencia, and a recognized expert on extra-financial accounting and control issues. Delphine has 18 years of experience in non-financial accounting and reporting and has worked with the UN Global Compact, IICR, WBCSD, the R3.0 Group, the Capital Coalition and CDSB, as well as with ANC on carbon accounting, multi-capital accounting and integrated reporting. Delphine has developed carbon accounting, ODD accounting, and multi-capital accounting and integrated reporting for large companies and SMEs. Before joining the academic world, she worked as a management controller at GE Healthcare, Danone and Syngenta in Paris, USA and Asia. Delphine is a member of CSEAR (Centre for Research in Social and Environmental Accounting) and Scientific Committee of EMAN Europe (Environmental Management Control and Sustainable Development Network). Delphine is also a United Nations Global Compact and CDSB expert advisor, a board member of the Capitals Coalition and a member of the EFRAG Lab Taskforce on non-financial reporting.