1、1 本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 外文题目 Accounting Through Green-Colored Glasses 外文出处 Issues in Accounting Education,1997:P129-140 外文 作者 Stephan E.Sefcik,Naomi S.Soderstrom, Christopher H.Stinson 原文 ： Accounting Through Green-Colored Glasses: Teaching Environmental Accounting Stephan E. Sefcik, Naomi S. Soderstro
2、mand Christopher H. Stinson ABSTRACT: Many firms are finding that some of their most costly and challenging accounting problems are in the environmental area. Environmental accounting can be defined simply as understanding, recognition and incorporation of the impact of environmental issues upon a f
3、irms traditional accounting sub-systems. This paper describes how environmental accounting issues can be incorporated into existing courses or made the focus of a new elective. Environmental accounting issues provide an interesting, contemporary and functionally integrative way to help students unde
4、rstand the relation among the different areas of accounting (i.e., financial, managerial, information systems, auditing and tax). Examples are included that describe environmental issues in each of these areas. THE major thrust of the Accounting Education Change Commissions (AECC) recommendations is
5、 to broaden the scope of accounting education. The traditional approach to teaching accounting has been to provide students with a mle-oriented taxonomy where textbook-style problems fit neatly into specific topical cells. Many educators feel that this approach has become inadequate for the increasi
6、ngly complex accounting issues that students will have to address throughout their careers. 2 Classroom boundaries established between financial, managerial and other accounting subdisciplines can interfere with students learning to incorporate information from each of these areas into decision maki
7、ng. Few real-world accounting problems today can be conveniently compartmentalized into a single accounting subdiscipline or methodology. Available solutions should not constrain approaches to problem solving； rather, the problem should drive the solution approach. As accounting educators, we must p
8、repare our students to respond to accounting issues in this fashion. The most important skill we can teach our students is to evaluate accounting problems critically and consider multiple approaches in the process of their analysis. Because environmental issues affect all areas of accounting, they p
9、rovide a particularly effective vehicle for illustrating how to integrate information and approaches from multiple accounting areas thereby giving students a deeper and broader understanding of accounting theory and its application. Incorporating environmental accounting issues into accounting curri
10、cula can broaden the scope and impact of accounting education in a manner consistent with the AECCs recommendations. In this paper, we provide examples of topics that can be used to incorporate environmental accounting issues into existing accounting classes. Specifically, we discuss how environment
11、al issues can be incorporated into existing courses covering financial accounting, managerial accounting, information systems, auditing or tax. Examples are included that illustrate environmental issues in each of these areas. Although each subdiscipline is addressed separately, we also consider int
12、eractions among the areas. We further discuss some advantages of creating a stand-alone Environmental Accounting elective. Finally, the appendix presents selected environmental accounting issues that arise in many of the available cases. These examples are included to illustrate how environmental ac
13、counting facilitates discussion of fundamental accounting issues while highlighting the integrative nature of the accounting function. BACKGROUND In the academic accounting literature of the 1970s, environmental accounting was considered part of the more general area of social accounting (e.g., Belk
14、aoui 3 1976； Ingram 1978； Ramanathan 1976； Rockness et al. 1977； Spicer 1978). Possibly because there were few explicit economic or legal consequences associated with social accounting, broad academic interest in this area soon faded. However, in the past decade there has been a substantial increase
15、 in international, federal, state and even local environmental regulation, as well as a dramatic increase in the number of lawsuits arising from violation of environmental laws and regulations. Because these changes affect all areas of accounting (and other business practices as well), consideration
16、 of Environmental Accounting provides students with an opportunity to examine how accounting practices respond to new legal, economic, regulatory and even ethical pressures. Furthermore, firms are becoming more interested in developing and improving their own environmental accounting strategies and
17、systems (Schmidheiny 1992). Arguably, a key difference between successful and unsuccessful firms of the future will be how quickly and effectively they respond to this new challenge. Because environmental strategies and systems are becoming so important in the competitive marketplace, sensitizing ou
18、r students to environmental issues in the accounting curriculum provides a good opportunity to meet that challenge. Critics (and cynics) view the term environmental accounting as an oxymoron. However, a more appropriate characterization is that the term is a juxtaposition of two, once unrelated, dis
19、ciplines. Still, a clear definition is somewhat elusive. In our view, environmental accounting is not accounting for the environment, or a course in how to value natural assets like old-growth timber or the spotted owl. It is not a course in how to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. Further,
20、 it is important to differentiate this new concept from the classical concept of Natural Resource Accounting and its macroeconomic perspective. At a basic level. Environmental Accounting is a course (or subject) that investigates how environmental issues affect traditional accounting subdisciplines.
21、 Thus, in some grander sense, it is a new and extremely powerful tool for the myriad of firms addressing measurement and valuation problems in the environmental area. Some may fear that characterizing the environment with numbers or incorporating environmental impact in the bottom line would co-opt ethical and moral
