ODA research seminar by Morten Møller Poulsen

The ODA Section invites you to an ODA research seminar by Morten Møller Poulsen:

Consequential, not durable: The excitement, experimentation and expiration of voluntary environmental management accounting 

Abstract
This paper explores how environmental management accounting (EMA) can change organisational practice without becoming institutionalised as an ongoing control in small businesses. Drawing on a three-year qualitative case study of three neighbouring restaurants, based on semi-structured interviews, observations and various document sources, we analyse the voluntary introduction of an energy performance dashboard in a setting marked by weak sustainability pressure, limited resources and collaboration and competition. Using an institutional logics perspective, with attention to theorisation and situations, we show that the dashboard generated excitement by making a previously opaque cost category visible. This stimulated three sets of experimentative accounting practices: direct engagement with the numbers, collaborative comparisons and consultant-guided interpretations. Through these practices, EMA numbers enabled actors to specify inefficiencies and justify operational changes, including altered routines, reduced excess capacity and investments in energy-efficient appliances. Yet the dashboard-related EMA practices did not endure. Once translation resources were exhausted and obvious inefficiencies addressed, the numbers no longer generated actionable problems without additional time, expertise and technical investment. The operational changes remained, but the EMA practices expired. We contribute to EMA research by investigating small businesses voluntarily adopting EMA and by showing that EMA may be temporary yet consequential, leaving durable organisational traces even as the accounting practice itself expires. We also contribute to work on theorisation and situations by demonstrating how recurring situations shape what actors specify as problematic and justify as actionable. Together, these insights clarify why EMA can become actionable in practice yet fail to reproduce itself as ongoing control.

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