Institutional isomorphism, environmental management accounting and environmental accountability: a review

Environmental sustainability has received much attention in recent times by world leaders. This is largely due to the rate at which the natural environment is deteriorating and thus, presenting an urgent need for action to ensure the continuity of the earth ecosystem to sustain life. Consequently, the world has witnessed heightened pressure on firms to engage in environmental accountability practices. This is partly because firms have been implicated as major contributors to environmental degradation, particularly in low-income settings. Extensive research has, therefore, been directed by the academic community to understand the nature and extent to which institutional factors and the firm’s initiatives may predict firm environmental accountability practice. This paper, therefore, aimed at providing a review and synthesis of institutional isomorphism, environmental management accounting and environmental accountability, and to propose a theoretical framework to investigate the nexus among these concepts. We observed that the relationship between the institutional isomorphic factors and environmental accountability practices defies consistency. Based on the findings, we advance a theoretical framework to help focus and understand the complex relationships among institutional isomorphic factors, environmental management accounting implementation and environmental accountability which are paramount to protecting the earth’s ecosystem and sustenance of human life.