Impact of environmental management accounting adoption on sustainability performance: Mediating role of corporate governance

This study aims to provide an extensive overview of the current state of sustainability reporting through the review studies on sustainability reports (SR) in the accounting literature for the period 2015–2020. A structured literature review (SLR) methodology is used to investigate how the SR literature develops and focuses. The study uses keywords such as “sustainability report” and “sustainability reporting” to identify studies that are relevant to a given topic. A total of 44 published studies were found. This study identifies the main directions of SR research in the 2015–2020 period and discusses several important aspects of research, namely methodology, research methods, and the theory used. To enrich the results, this study defines the scope, country of research, topics and sectors studied. The study provides insight into future SR research used by researchers to develop SR research. Several things are proposed that can be used as a guide for future SR research, such as sustainability in SMEs and the public sector. Ensuring sustainability is one of the research topics that can be a direction for researchers in the future. Theories such as contingency and source credibility can be an alternative to explaining the reality of sustainability reporting.

Sustainability is a key area of concern for manufacturing firms’ long-term success. However, the manufacturing industry has not been fully conscious of the potential sustainable values across manufacturing system. There is a need to better understand how companies can improve sustainable value creation. Recent research and practices have shown that sustainable operations can be one way to create sustainable values (e.g. economic, environmental and social). This review article focuses on the available empirical studies on the impact of lean and sustainability practices on sustainable performance from 2000 to 2018 in the context of manufacturing firms. Integrating lean and sustainability practices into manufacturing system confrontы operations managers with paradoxical tensions of sustainability objectives. Theoretically having paradoxical mindset will help firms’ managers make sense of and responв to such paradoxical tensions. In the context of sustainable operations studies, the issue of paradoxical mindset has been given less emphasis. Therefore, through the lens of the paradox theory, this study has developed a new conceptual framework for future research to investigate how paradoxical mindset moderates the impact of lean and sustainability practices on the sustainable performance of manufacturing industry. This study may add to the understanding of the circumstances, under which lean and sustainability practices impact sustainable outcomes.

This study highlights the complexity of the relationship between sustainability performance, environment, social and governance (ESG) reporting, and tax aggressiveness, which is a critical concern amidst the increasing demands for corporate social accountability. Companies in Indonesia and Malaysia, especially those in the non-financial sector, face increasing regulatory pressure to meet ESG standards. This study uses 263 Indonesian and 311 Malaysian companies as samples because both countries are prominent emerging markets in Southeast Asia with fast-growing economies, diverse industries, and abundant natural resources. However, aggressive tax avoidance remains a common strategy to maintain financial flexibility. This study aims to examine whether companies with high ESG performance tend to reduce tax avoidance practices or use it as a strategy to cover ESG costs. Through 2SLS regression analysis on 2012–2021 data, the results show that ESG performance has a significant positive effect on tax aggressiveness, where companies with high ESG performance also tend to engage in tax avoidance to cover ESG costs. Conversely, tax aggressiveness positively affects ESG performance because companies increase ESG engagement to reduce reputational risks from aggressive tax practices. The simultaneous test found a reciprocal relationship between the two variables with an R² value of 29.4% for tax aggressiveness and 63.1% for ESG performance. This study suggests stricter regulations to reduce tax avoidance in companies with high ESG performance and provides insights for policymakers in Southeast Asia.