Advanced Corporate Reporting and Sustainability

Aims

This course acts as an introduction to social and environmental (sustainability) accounting, accountability, ethics and corporate governance. The aim is to encourage students to become aware of the social and environmental issues influencing, and being influenced by, accounting, thereby allowing them to gain a more ‘holistic’ knowledge and understanding of the accounting discipline. It is anticipated that this will also assist students prepare for the broader dimensions of accountancy in practice.  Thus, the different initiatives as well as developed standards regarding the sustainability reporting are going to be analyzed. On the other hand, Corporate governance issues – e.g. ownership and group structures, board of directors, executive compensation, etc. – are debated by media, investors, managers, directors, consultants, authorities, politicians, and scholars from different disciplines (e.g. finance, economics, law, management, etc.). Despite this growing interest on the topic, there is not a clear understanding of what the core corporate governance principles are and how they should be implemented.

In this course students will be exposed to, and requested to critique, some of the key research topics and qualitative research methods found within the social accounting and accountability literature. The aim is to provide students with a good knowledge and understanding of the core theoretical and empirical underpinnings of this literature; and to develop their in-depth analytical skills.

In addition, having completed this course, students should have a well-developed foundation to use in order to develop a detailed research proposal for a thesis in sustainability, accountability and ethics related areas.

Learning Outcomes

  • Understand and mature a systemic view of corporate governance issues and mechanisms
  • Analyze ownership structure and corporate governance of different companies to find out risks of potential abuse of minority shareholders
  • Design ownership structures and governance mechanisms aimed at improving the ethical and sustainable value production and distribution

Content

  • Shareholders and stakeholders view of the firm
  • Corporate governance and private benefits of control
  • Corporate governance mechanisms: potential benefits and drawbacks
  • Board design
  • Executive compensation