Integration of sustainability issues into management accounting textbooks

Due to the increasing requirements of external and internal stakeholders, sustainability topics are gaining strategic importance in corporate practice. Successful corporate sustainability transformation requires targeted information on a firm’s sustainability performance which should be provided by management accountants due to their specific expertise in gathering, analysing and presenting information. A prerequisite for the successful implementation of sustainability management accounting (SMA) is the adequate education of the next generation of management accountants. To this end, sustainability issues should also be included in management accounting textbooks, which are an important source for educators in determining the structure and the content of management accounting courses. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the extent to which management accounting textbooks deal with SMA concepts and methods to support corporate sustainability management. 33 English-language management accounting textbooks are examined applying a quantitative and a qualitative content analysis. Overall, SMA issues are dealt with mainly in a basic way, if at all. Where sustainability issues are considered, the textbooks briefly address basic concepts and definitions, selected legal requirements and standards, the integration of sustainability KPIs in balanced scorecards and environmental costing, while issues of sustainability planning and control as well as internal sustainability reporting are mostly neglected. We offer alternative explanations for a lack of curricula reform towards sustainability and propose to integrate sustainability issues into management accounting textbooks to support educators and students in teaching and acquiring the necessary SMA competencies.