56 Int. J. Global Environmental Issues, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2012
Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Paying attention to environmental pay-offs: the case
of an Indonesian textile manufacturer
Stefan Schaltegger*, Tobias Viere and
Dimitar Zvezdov
Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM),
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Scharnhorststr. 1,
D-21335 Lüneburg, Germany
E-mail: schaltegger@uni.leuphana.de
E-mail: viere@uni.leuphana.de
E-mail: zvezdov@uni.leuphana.de
*Corresponding author
Abstract: Despite the growing recognition of economic risks related to
insufficient corporate environmental performance and the opportunities
resulting from improvements, many companies have been struggling in practice
to act accordingly. Among the reasons for implementation deficiencies may be
a lack of information on reduction potentials and insufficient interdisciplinary
communication between environmental managers, production managers and
accountants. This paper investigates with the exemplar of a case study of an
Indonesian textile manufacturer how environmental management accounting
(EMA) can support management in choosing adequate accounting tools for
providing relevant information for cleaner production and as a consequence of
this to overcome hesitation to substantially reduce environmental impacts.
This paper illustrates how the EMA framework and various EMA
techniques can support interdisciplinary collaboration between environmental
managers, production managers and accountants in improving the overall
performance of their organisations – both from a financial and from an
environmental point of view. The case study reveals that the choice of EMA
tools may have to be very specific depending on the decision situation. This is
shown with specific EMA tools like monthly performance assessments,
mid- and long-term eco-efficiency investments, and product pricing, all of
which are rarely discussed in the academic literature.
Keywords: environmental management accounting; EMA; decision making;
textile industry; Indonesia.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Schaltegger, S., Viere, T.
and Zvezdov, D. (2012) ‘Paying attention to environmental pay-offs: the case
of an Indonesian textile manufacturer’, Int. J. Global Environmental Issues,
Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.56–75.
Biographical notes: Stefan Schaltegger is Full Professor of Sustainability
Management as well as Founder and Director of the Centre for Sustainability
Management and the MBA Sustainability Management at the Leuphana
University, Lüneburg, Germany. His interest in environmental accounting
has led to numerous publications of high relevance for both academics and
practitioners. His research areas include corporate sustainability management
and corporate environmental management especially environmental
information management, environmental and sustainability accounting and
reporting, and operational and other sustainability-related management. He is
the Chair of the Environmental and Sustainability Management Accounting
Network (EMAN).