Lake Pedder: Accounting, environmental decision-making, nature and impression management
本文通过1960年代塔斯马尼亚佩德湖淹没案例,揭示会计信息如何被选择性、创造性地用于合法化支持成本效益计算的环境决策,使环境因素被边缘化,并作为印象管理工具。
This paper looks at the role of accounting in a major environmental infrastructural project, the flooding of Lake Pedder in Tasmania in the 1960s. This was a contentious political decision in which accounting information was important and decisive. The paper found that accounting was used selectively and creatively to legitimate decision-making supporting a cost-benefit calculus. Environmental considerations were rendered invisible, marginalised and excluded from the evaluation. Accounting was used as an impression management tool through selectivity, bias and enhancement. It provides a rare illustration of the limitations of accounting for an infrastructural environmental decision using a real life, in depth case study.