Editorial

We are pleased to present the third issue of the year to complete Social and Environmental Accountability Journal's (SEAJ) volume 38. Accompanying this editorial, this issue features several contributions including a research paper, a teaching case, a commentary, and several article reviews.

We are particularly pleased to include in this issue the 2017 Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) Teaching Case Competition winner. The teaching case, authored by Solange Garcia and Ian Thomson, provides a case study and resources to facilitate learning on the integration of sustainability concepts into business decision-making (Garcia and Thomson 2018). The case, centred around the export of a frozen fruit pulp in the Amazon and grounded in Experiential Learning Theory and Multi-Criteria Decision Aid, allows student groups to experience the role of various stakeholders as they are asked to represent their values, knowledge and preferences as they consider various decision options and their consequences. We are sure that the case will provide a useful resource for those teaching on sustainability courses, especially those that wish to engage their students in complex decision-making processes.

Overall, volume 38 of SEAJ consists of 7 original papers, 2 commentaries, 1 teaching case, 1 guest editorial, an obituary for late Professor David Campbell, as well as 15 reviews. The variety of contributions to volume 38 is pleasing to see, especially the growing use of commentaries and polemics (Cuckston 2018; Tilt 2018) and the publication of teaching-related contributions (e.g. the teaching case by Garcia and Thomson (2018) discussed above and a book review by Dey (2018) on a potential teaching resource).

SEAJ is the society journal of CSEAR. As such, in addition to considering the content of this volume, we would also like to devote some of this editorial to a discussion of how the journal might seek to move forward and how it might best serve its scholarly community. This is something that has been a focus of our discussions and energy this year as we work to ensure the continued success of the journal within today's publication environment.

At the beginning of the year, we undertook a review of our Editorial Board and as a result were pleased to welcome several new members to the board. The journal's editorial board is an important aspect of the journal and when extending an invitation to new members we were focused on growing the diversity of the board (in relation to research topics, methods and geographical location). This reflects the growing international profile of the journal and diversity in topics the journal covers.

Regular submissions remain a key stable of the journal. We have been pleased with the number of submissions received this year which indicates a growing awareness and international profile of the journal. SEAJ's aim and scope, available at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/reaj20/current, provides an opportunity for the journal to publish a range of different manuscript types. This diversity is well highlighted by this year's SEAJ Reg Matthews awards, which are handed out annually to papers the SEAJ's Executive Editorial Board considers having stood out from the papers published in the volume. At the beginning of the year, we were pleased to be able to award Pål Vik with the best paper award for his paper titled ‘What's So Social about Social Return on Investment? A Critique of Quantitative Social Accounting Approaches Drawing on Experiences of International Microfinance.’ Vik’s (2017) contribution is positioned within the sector of not-for-profit and social enterprise organisations, and the paper takes a critical look at attempts to calculate monetary values for social outcomes. Using microfinance as the basis of his discussion, Vik provides a critical assessment of Social Return on Investment (SROI) and calls for a broader recognition of the inherent limitations of both SROI and other similar quantitative approaches. Pål Vik's paper is also an excellent example of how SEAJ and social accounting research in general can benefit from contributions from scholars usually working outside the scholarly field of accounting. In addition to Pål Vik's work, this year we also acknowledged Dillard and Pullman (2017) with a Highly Commended award. Dillard and Pullman’s (2017) paper discussing the management information and accountability systems of a values-based organisation takes the more ‘traditional’ form of a qualitative empirical paper. We are seeking to continue this diversity in the journal recognising the different ways authors can contribute to knowledge in our field. We ask that you keep the journal in mind for the submission of your own work and consider how you too might contribute.

Special issues remain a significant aspect of the journal. Issue 1 of this volume was a special issue entitled ‘Environmental Management Accounting: The Missing Link to Sustainability’, co-edited by Delphine Gibassier and Simon Alcouffe. This issue featured a guest editorial and four original papers, and as a whole provides insights on how environmental issues (could) feature within the management control of different types of organisations, as well as ideas regarding how these topics could be approached in future research. As we write this Editorial, the next special issue of the journal guest edited by Leonardo Rinaldi on Sustainability Governance is in its final stages of preparation. Being an emerging area, and one of importance to our community, we are looking forward to seeing that issue materialise and would welcome further submissions on this topic in the future.

Looking forward, we welcome expressions of interest for special issues in the future and would also encourage you to submit your work for two special issues we currently have in development.

The special issue planned for 2020 seeks to further consider the future of SEAJ – and social and environmental accountability (SEA) more broadly. The issue guest edited by ourselves together with Matt Scobie and Matt Sorola is calling for contributions which consider what the future of SEA research and practice might look like and what is needed to get us there. This special issue seeks to draw on the history of the field, including critical debates and radical critique, and aims at building on those for a discussion regarding how the social and environmental accounting research should develop towards the future at this critical point of time in history. We are pleased to be working with Matt Scobie and Matt Sorola, two emerging scholars in our field, on this project. The decision to include two emerging scholars represents our continued acknowledgement of the importance of emerging scholars and the value of their voice within the research community and journal. The deadline for this special issue is 31 December 2018.

As special issues require a sufficient lead time to gather interest and put together a base of submissions, we have already decided that in 2021 there will be a special issue on Accounting and Conservation guest edited by Thomas Cuckston. This special issue builds on a commentary by Cuckston (2018) published in this issue, in which he discusses the emerging and fast-growing accounting for biodiversity research. Cuckston (2018) provides a short review of the burgeoning accounting for biodiversity literature, identifying that it takes two forms – (1) research which attempts to bring biodiversity into existing SEA mechanisms such as reporting and (2) research which starts with biodiversity conservation and investigates the role of accounting within those efforts. He asks the question ‘how can accounting for biodiversity research become a force for conservation?’ Like Cuckston, we believe that this is an important question to ask and debate to be had which is why we have invited Tom to guest edit a special issue on the topic. You will find the call for papers, including key dates, for the special issue on Accounting and Conservation on the SEAJ website and we encourage you to contribute to this discussion by submitting your work to this issue.

More broadly, commentaries and polemics play an important role in our scholarly community as we seek to engage in discussions and debates about various aspect of our work and field. This is why we have sought to increase the number of commentaries and polemics that we publish in the journal and are actively seeking contributions. In addition to the commentary by Tom Cuckston mentioned above, we also published earlier this year a commentary by Carol Tilt (2018), who calls for us to reflect on the importance of context when undertaking social and environmental reporting research. In her contribution, she clearly outlines why a consideration of context is required in such research, and cautions researchers against unconsciously adopting dominant (Western) understandings and interpretations when studying non-Western contexts. Furthermore, Tilt calls for more research in underrepresented contexts in our literature (e.g. Africa, South America), something we support and as such, welcome research from these contexts to the journal.

As a part of our work to stimulate debate and critical discussion, in 2019 SEAJ's volume 39 will include further commentaries on issues of importance from scholars working in the field. We are looking forward to publishing these contributions and hope that they prompt reflection and debate. Any ideas for future commentaries are also welcomed and can be sent directly to the editors.

On a broader level, our aim at increasing the number of commentaries published in SEAJ relates to one of our long-term concerns, the relevance of scholarly research (Correa and Laine 2013; Tregidga, Milne, and Kearins 2018). We are well aware and acknowledge the various institutional pressures, expectations and outright demands scholars in different contexts are facing at various points of careers. Clearly, these have an impact on how we do research and how we seek to publish our work (e.g. Humphrey and Gendron 2015). At the same time, and given in particular the mounting evidence on the rapidly escalating sustainability challenges across the globe (e.g. Schaltegger 2018), we would like to challenge all prospective authors to consider the broader motivation of their research when seeking to position it within prior knowledge. Evidently, at various conference presentations and manuscript drafts, we see attempts by scholars to find gaps in the literature, to identify small areas in which the collective knowledge lacks something, or alternatively to jump on those streams of research that appear to be gathering speed and popularity at the very point of time.

This may all be fine, but at the same time we often find ourselves asking, why is the author pursuing the very research s/he is currently working on. That is, the presentation or the manuscript might not contain any other motivation regarding why this type of knowledge would be necessary, or how it would contribute to the broader literature or practice. Hence, we maintain that it is once more worth highlighting that in our view a gap in the literature does not in itself suffice as a rationale for research. Not all gaps are worth exploring, some research streams may end up being faddish, or just outright meaningless. This is not to say that popular research topics would be wrong, or that gap-spotting should be banned. However, we wish to point out that gap-spotting or herding around a popular theme cannot be the only rationale for a study to be conducted (see Alvesson and Sandberg 2011). There have to be other reasons – both when starting up the process and eventually at the write-up stage.

Finally, we wish to take up the reviews section, which continues to be an important feature of the journal. Each issue in this volume has featured an array of article and book reviews written by both emerging and senior scholars. We are particularly pleased to see an increase in the number of book reviews included demonstrating the important role of books in our field. The reviews team (Hannele Mäkelä, Michelle Rodrigue and Lies Bouten) have again done a fantastic job of this section of the journal. As part of the regular rotation of the reviews team, Hannele Mäkelä leaves this role at the end of this year. We thank Hannele for her contribution to the journal and are pleased that she will continue to support the journal by joining the Editorial Board. We are pleased to announce that Matt Scobie has agreed to join the reviews team from 2019 to 2022. Matt will be a great addition to the team and we thank him for taking on this important role within the journal.

We would like to close by thanking all the authors and reviewers that have participated in this volume of the journal. We seek to serve the community of scholars, but we are also reliant on that community for the provision of content and its review. Feedback is also always welcomed and can be sent directly to the editors.