Analysis of environmental costs in the context of achieving sustainable advantage and resource based costing model proposal of reporting environmental costs: Balanced scorecard (BSC)

Abstract

Nowadays, the prevention of environmental problems and importance of elimination of this problem are among the issues which should be understood better by all disciplines. The accounting also is not insensitive to this subject-matter. This increased sensitivity for the environment has brought the concept of environmental accounting. Today, the costs of environment protection in micro-level have gained significance and will continue to increase in the future. However, the environment motive has influenced the genetic codes of firms directly or indirectly and the intensity of this effect continues to increase. Hence, in this study, it is aimed to draw the attention to increasing importance of environmental costs. The main theme of this study was primarily providing environmental costs rather than measuring it correctly. This balance is only possible with the source-based measurement model as a scorecard. Therefore, this article discusses the relationship between the so-called sustainability balanced scorecards and eco-efficiency analysis. Eco-efficiency analysis not only provides a data source for sustainability balanced scorecards but also it serves as a link between the balanced scorecard and corporate environmental accounting systems in the perspective of environmental information systems; so that, eco-efficiency as a component of an environmental information system becomes an adapter with two interfaces characterized in this article. The main focus is on the principle of cause and effect, its different forms, and the implications for the design of appropriate information system components.