Editorial

We are delighted to present the third issue of this year to complete Social and Environmental Accountability Journal’s (SEAJ) volume 37. This volume, containing 10 original articles, 3 commentaries and 18 reviews, was inaugurated by a special issue on ‘Social enterprise, accountability and social accounting’, guest edited by Hannele Mäkelä, Ericka Costa and Jane Gibbon. The questions addressed in this special issue lie at the heart of the social accounting project (the reason of SEAJ’s existence). The articles in this special issue explored how accounting can be mobilised to measure, assess, understand, protect and challenge organisations sitting at the margins of financial orthodoxy, considering that those organisations can enable a better understanding of the interplay between economic, social and ecological accounts (Mäkelä, Gibbon, and Costa 2017).

This special issue discussed socially relevant questions with a high scholarly quality, and we are confident that the forthcoming special issues of SEAJ will attain similar standards of excellence and relevance. SEAJ’s volume 38 will begin with a special issue on ‘Environmental Management Accounting: the missing link to sustainability?’, with guest editors Delphine Gibassier and Simon Alcouffe. While this issue is already nearing completion, we would like to call your attention on our subsequent special issue on ‘Sustainability governance’, which will be guest edited by Leonardo Rinaldi. The deadline for manuscript submissions for this special issue is on the 31st of December, 2017, with the publication due in early 2019.

We would also like to take this opportunity to revisit the reason of SEAJ’s existence to start the celebration of the tenth anniversary of SEAJ’s new epoch. For this purpose, we feel that doing a little bit of history is apposite. An important date in this context is 1993, when Rob Gray, with the support of other scholars, founded Social and Environmental Accounting as the journal of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research, which at that point was based at the University of Dundee. This publication was established as the successor of Social Accounting Monitor, which was edited by James Guthrie and Reg Mathews.

From 1993 until 2007 the achievements of Social and Environmental Accounting exceeded initial expectations (Gray 1993) and the journal fulfilled an important mission, providing a vehicle for communications about new developments on social accounting to both academics and practitioners. The journal was also instrumental for supporting isolated academics in different countries, as well as for the construction of a community of researchers interested in devising ways to achieve a more sustainable society by making organisations accountable for the social and ecological effects of their activities.

In 2008, Jan Bebbington and Jeffrey Unerman (2008), together with the CSEAR community, launched a new epoch of the journal under its current name, Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, and gradually introduced a peer review process for the selection of manuscripts. Despite these and other changes, the journal has always sought to find a balance between rigour and relevance, by enabling communications that are unconventional in refereed research journals, such as commentaries and article reviews. The journal ethos has always been to bridge different gaps (between theory and praxis; between established and emerging scholars) to progress for a less unsustainable society.

This brief account of the journal’s past evinces that social accounting has a history, of which there is much to learn from. We hence recommend browsing and reading the past issues of SEAJ and its predecessors: it is a pleasure, a source of inspiration and helps to think of SEAJ’s reason.

And time goes. With this issue, SEAJ completes its tenth volume in this new epoch. The journal has made some remarkable achievements in this decade, establishing itself as a research journal positively regarded by a growing research community interested in social and environmental accountability. This is, however, an opportunity to remark that sustainable development and social and environmental justice are, by far, more important than a publication hit or a successful journal. We would like to repeat in this editorial how important it is, after a decade, to keep in mind the reason for this journal: Without the ambition to know, criticise and create social and environmental accounting and accountability for a more sustainable, equal and fair society, SEAJ would be redundant.

The reason of SEAJ’s existence is celebrated every year with the Reg Mathews Memorial Prize, commemorating a pioneer of social and environmental accounting and the founder of Social Accounting Monitor. The Executive Editorial Board decided this year to award the Reg Mathews Memorial Prize, recognising the most significant contribution in volume 36, to David Monciardini (2016) for his research on the regulatory process that led the EU to adopt the Directive on non-financial reporting.

In this editorial, we would like to commemorate our dear friend and colleague David Campbell, who sadly passed away recently. David made a distinguished contribution to the understanding of how social and environmental issues are portrayed in corporate reports. He had a long association with CSEAR and was involved in SEAJ in various roles; for example, in volume 35 he edited together with Jan Bebbington a special issue on economic democracy (Bebbington and Campbell 2015). We feel, however, that the figure and the contribution of David Campbell deserve a separate remembrance. In consequence, the editorial board has decided to commission a manuscript celebrating David Campbell’s contribution to the social and environmental accounting research community to be published in the next issue of SEAJ.

Finally, we would like to welcome Helen Tregidga as the new joint-editor replacing Carlos Larrinaga, whose four-year term has come to an end. Carlos is extremely grateful to the CSEAR community for this opportunity. Helen is a committed and accomplished scholar, who has already for several years served as one of our co-editors for book and article reviews. We are sure that she will be up to the new challenges that are ahead of us. Moreover, we would also like to welcome Lies Bouten, who has kindly accepted to join SEAJ’s Reviews Editors team. We are very grateful to Helen and Lies for their willingness to accept the tasks, and to work with SEAJ to seek progress towards a less unsustainable society.