New development: Accounting for human-made disasters—comparative analysis of the support to Ukraine in times of war

IMPACT

The article provides interesting insights and highlights tensions in the multiple international responses to supporting Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February 2022. Humanitarian aid and donations were launched almost instantly, while military support varied from country to country. The pattern of immediate reactions enables the visualization of global economic and financial architecture and suggests how governments and international institutions might better address future crises. The article will be of value to practitioners by critically assessing and re-evaluating support packages in addressing human-made disasters and subsequent humanitarian crises.

ABSTRACT

On 24 February 2022, the Russian army attacked several Ukrainian cities and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This disastrous decision by the Russian government caused the outbreak of war and started a domino effect of subsequent crises on a global scale. The authors initiate a debate on accounting to mitigate a human-made disaster, as well as mapping and analysing the multiple responses to the invasion, based not only on humanitarian aid but also on military and other types of support. Only a few accounting studies have to date explored human-made disasters related to socio-technical and warfare shocks. Importantly, this article begins to fill this gap and presents a future research agenda.

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© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

KEYWORDS:

• Accounting
• man-made disaster
• international responses
• Ukraine
• war

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the scholars and experts who contributed country-specific data to this article. We thank Atanas Atanasov (University of Economics—Varna, Bulgaria); Laure Célérier (University of Ottawa—Canada); Beatriz Cuadrado Ballesteros (University of Salamanca, Spain); Andreas Bergmann (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland); Hans-Jürgen Bruns (Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany); Tjerk Budding (Vrije Universitet Amsterdam, the Netherlands); Johan Christiaens (Ghent University, Belgium); Sandra Cohen (Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece); Carol Ebdon (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA); Laurence Ferry (Durham University, UK and Rutgers University, USA); Cemil Eren Fırtın (University of Gothenburg, Sweden); Patrícia Gomes (Polytechnical Institute of Cávado and Ave, Portugal); Toomas Haldma (Tartu University, Estonia); Aziza Laguecir (EDHEC Business School, France); Laura Maran (RMIT University, Australia); Juraj Nemec (Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic); Tobias Polzer (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria); Caroline Aggestam Pontoppidan (Copenaghen Business School, Denmark); Nives Botica Redmayne (Massey University, New Zealand); Christoph Reichard (Potsdam University, Germany); Gorana Roje (Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction and State Assets, Croatia); Agnieszka Stachniak (Ministry of Finance, Poland); Ebru Tekin (University of Özyegin); Adriana Tiron Tudor (Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania); Timur Uman (Jönköping University, Sweden); Jarmo Vakkuri (Tampere University, Finland); Vesna Vašićek (University of Zagreb, Croatia); Kiyoshi Yamamoto (University of Tokyo, Japan).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).