This paper explores carbon management accounting (CMA) by examining the practices of leading German companies with pronounced policies and histories. Using interview data, field notes, documentary evidence, and questionnaires, this research identifies the CMA behaviour of 10 companies and grounds it in a theoretical framework to categorise the practices. With climate change to the forefront CMA provides an opportunity to (re)gain competitive advantage by exceeding the legislative requirements for reporting on carbon and carbon‐equivalent emissions, CMA, when properly understood and contextualised, provides an ability to increase both effectiveness and efficiency of information collection and dissemination, and may assist in overcoming the currently uncoordinated approaches evident in the sample companies, and thus contribute to improved carbon management performance.

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International audiencePurpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the body of literature on environmental management accounting (EMA) and provides a quantitative overview of the academic as well as the professional literature constituting the field. By doing so, the paper discusses whether EMA has developed as a discipline.Design/methodology/approach– Based on a database containing 814 (396 of them published in academic journals) publications in English, German and French with a publication date prior to 2012 a bibliometric analysis is conducted. Data on the publications, journals, authors and citations were collected, double‐checked and examined by applying bibliometric measures.Findings– The bibliometric analysis identifies trends in EMA research publications which show that EMA has developed as a young discipline, but is still faces challenges to get better established in mainstream accounting and management research. Although the publication number is growing, a substantial part of the publications have been published outside mainstream accounting journals in non‐accounting journals, books and reports. A recent trend towards establishing specialised environmental (and sustainability) accounting journals is also rendered apparent. The low number of highly cited publications of few authors, however, indicates that EMA is still to become a mainstream field of research.Originality/value– The paper discusses with the help of bibliometric analysis and measures whether EMA has developed as a discipline and whether it has become part of mainstream accounting research

Purpose – This paper aims to, with the continuous take-up of sustainability issues by companies and with the growing experience companies gain in dealing with this topic, raise the question of whether accountants are involved in the corporate practice of managing sustainability information, and if yes, what their role is. The actual involvement of accountants in corporate environmental and sustainability management has merely been investigated to date. Design/methodology/approach – Based on 58 in-depth interviews with corporate practitioners, this paper, first, explores the roles in the sustainability accounting practice in companies which are considered to be leading in sustainability reporting in the UK and Germany. Second, the role of accountants is analysed from a power theory perspective. Findings – The main findings suggest that accountants are partially involved in sustainability accounting practice but mainly exert a gate-keeping role between sustainability managers and higher management. The findings raise questions of how to better involve accountants in earlier steps of the sustainability management accounting process. Research limitations/implications – The explorative research is based on interviews in European companies considered to be among the leaders in sustainability reporting. Practical implications – Empirically investigating the role of accountants can help improve sustainability accounting practice and education. Should it turn out that the accountants have no other option but to act as gatekeepers, accounting education will play a major role in overcoming this deficiency in the pursuit of improved sustainability knowledge and performance. If, on the other hand, it is the defensive stance of accountants and the fear of losing power in corporate structures which motivates them to act as gatekeepers, mechanisms to motivate them to cooperate should be researched. Social implications – The paper empirically investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. This can help overcome organisational challenges impeding companies to successfully implement sustainability measures. Originality/value – The paper investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. The empirical analysis is based on a framework to identify different roles in sustainability accounting. Two possible development paths for a stronger constructive involvement of accountants are identified – to improve sustainability education for accountants if lack of sustainability knowledge is a major obstacle, and/or to improve incentives and structures motivating accountants to contribute with their information management expertise on all steps of the sustainability accounting process.

Little empirical research has been conducted on perceptions of the types of sustainability information dealt with by different managers in internal company processes. In this study the roles of different managers are distinguished based on contingency theory and using the categorisation in the sustainability balanced scorecard concept. Expected sustainability information types are identified for these roles and hypotheses are derived and tested about perceptions of the types of sustainability information in different management roles. Interviews identified 116 roles involved with sustainability information in a set of leading German and UK sustainability reporting companies. Results from analysing sustainability information types contingent upon different management roles contribute to the understanding of sustainability accounting systems and practicesand how companies can best support different management roles with appropriate sustainability information.