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1. Introduction
There are numerous reasons that call for organizations around the world to consider its environmental performance seriously (Parker, 2000; Soonawalla, 2006; Lee, 2012). These include, but not limited to, human-made as well as natural disasters such as BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes, the Asian tsunami and global warming. These incidents have resulted in increased media coverage and a growth in public awareness that have led to a mounting demand by stakeholders for organizations to adopt cleaner and safer environmental practices (Burritt et al., 2002a). Environment-friendly practices have given rise to a body of accounting practices referred to as Environmental Management Accounting (EMA). Despite its lack of a definite boundary or definition, EMA has emerged as an interface between management accounting and environmental management (Bennett et al., 2002). Numerous recent studies on EMA from different perspectives reflect the importance of accounting when pursuing environmental management strategies (Schaltegger et al., 2013).
The term EMA has various definitions [Bartolomeo et al., 2000; Bennett et al., 2002; Burritt et al., 2002b; Burritt, 2004; International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), 2005]. Yet, there is no single, universally accepted definition (IFAC, 2005), despite a fairly common understanding of EMA for the past two decades (Schaltegger et al., 2013). EMA provides physical and monetary information on the use and flow of energy, water and materials and monetary information on environment-related costs, earnings and savings (Burritt et al., 2002a, 2002b). This gives rise to two types of EMA systems: monetary EMA (MEMA) and physical EMA (PEMA). MEMA deals with environmental aspects of corporate activities expressed in monetary units, while PEMA focuses on a company’s impact on the natural environment expressed in terms of physical units. In addition, EMA distinguishes between ad hoc and routine information while focusing on past, current or future time frames and short and long terms (Burritt et al., 2002a). Based on these dimensions of EMA information, Burritt et al. (2002a) have suggested a comprehensive framework for EMA and possible tools which can be used. Adoption of EMA has been witnessed throughout the world including developing and developed countries. Much research on EMA has so far focused on developed countries and research on developing countries...