Ben Karatz

... across EU member countries, which emit about 45% of the EU's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. ... issues that arose during phase one – such as permit auctions, accounting treatment of ... 2008) to improve and extend the Community's GHG emis-sion allowance trading system. ...

The pursuit of sustainability in business practices has necessitated the inte- grated assessment of corporate economic, environmental and social performances. Continuous technological, political and legal evolutions enforce the implementation of Sustainable Development (SD) principles in major sectors of Greek corporate reality. However, the ultimate criteria for the evaluation of a company's performance remain its profitability and market value. Interesting parties emphasise and base their credit and investment decisions on various accounting ratios of return produced on data disclosed in the financial statements of companies. This paper analyses how the traditional accounting ratios, discourage the implementation of investment plans that aim to improve the environmental performance of companies and therefore can prove inadequate and misleading for SD applications. With few exceptions, most international studies have recorded a positive relationship between the environmental performances of proactive firms and their financial positions and market values in the long run. This fact has consistently been disregarded in the computation of the return ratios, widely used in the Greek context to set up the basis for management rewards and bonuses. The divergence of the real market value of a corporation from the book value on which ratios are based indicates the urgent need for adjustment to the return ratios so that they can record the positive economic impact of sustainable actions and encourage decision makers in this direction. This article offers recommendations about how such an adjustment can be achieved while the company works within traditional accounting principles.

ABSTRACT Universities have been consistently considered significant contributors to the pursuit of regional sustainability initiatives for over two decades. The composite nature of sustainable development (SD) has appointed Universities to critical partners to all relevant efforts, always in firm collaboration with other local actors. An extensive number of articles presenting relevant University experiences has been published in academic journals worldwide. A literature review and critique of such articles, published between the years 2003–2011, after the declaration of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), is presented in this paper. Though the paper offers a broader analysis of the relevant literature, it, ipso facto, emphasizes the role and contribution of two leading journals in the field, the Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education and the Journal of Cleaner Production. The paper finds that the published ESD research covers a wide range of regions, topics, methodologies, and findings. The prevailing methodological approaches include theoretical and case-study articles. Yet, the former suffer from a rigorous conceptual framework deficiency while the latter are characterized by their descriptive nature which can be inspiring and encouraging for future peer efforts but of limited added value to theory development.