“When I started this about 30 years ago those of us researching social and environmental accounting and reporting were almost seen as a as a bit of a pariah, doing something weird and wacky,” Dr Carol Adams comments, reflecting upon a career which has been spent, for the most part, at the forefront of global sustainability reporting.

It’s fair to say Dr Adams has been used to being in the minority; both as a female working in business and accounting during her early days and in regards to where her passions lay – not in the Xs and Os of spreadsheets but her wider ideas of how companies could perform better, not just for their profits but for people and the planet too.

After building a solid career for herself in the corporate world, Dr Adams was driven to change track by a desire to do more for the greater good. Exiting the corporate world to gain her teaching credentials she first entered Academia at Glasgow University, carving a niche for herself in social, environmental and accounting research from the get-go.

This too proved to be a little explored corner of the sector, “Some mainstream academics did look down their noses a little. It wasn’t considered ‘proper research’ and wasn’t considered relevant to accounting,” she recalls. So much so, she initially found difficulty in publishing her research, with many academic journals not equipped or willing to deal with her subject area.

The perspective on this has changed enormously over 30 years. Today, Dr Adams’ little-explored corner of academia has become an important areas of industry-related research.

Making waves and unchartered waters

Focusing on, and contributing to, global sustainability goals is transforming from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” element of corporate strategy.

Driven by the looming threat of climate change, greater demands and increasing mandates handed down by governments and international collectives requiring businesses to consider the consequences of their operations, research, analysis and direction on how companies can act in a more responsible manner has never been more vital.

Despite the need for all factions of society to play their part, there are mixed views on how individual actors – companies and organisations specifically – can work to make a meaningful contribution, never mind doing so in line with the rules and regulations set for them.

Linking research, teaching and practice and policy work has been Dr Adams’ academic calling.

Today, Dr Adams is Professor of Accounting at Durham University Business School. She’s also an internationally recognised researcher in corporate accounting and reporting and its role in the relationships between business, society and the environment. She has more than 20,000 citations of her academic work to her name, and her own research journal, for which she acts as editor, resides within the top 9% in the accounting sector.

Outside of academic pursuits, Dr Adams is Chair of the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Global Sustainability Standards Board, a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board’s Sustainability Reporting Project Advisory Panel and Chair of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland’s (ICAS) Sustainability Panel. She offers support to industry through consultancy and voluntary roles.

For nearly three decades, Dr Adams’ work has been actively bridging the gap between academic ideas and insight and industry action. But what does she consider being her most considerable achievements? And what is on the horizon?

We spoke to Dr Adams to find out more about her work, her inspirations and her focus for the future.

Looking over your career, what would you say are the three biggest ideas that you’ve given to your sector?

Early on, I’d noticed there had been a lot of desk research into corporate reporting. I not only wanted to look at why organisations reported some things. I wanted to explore why they didn’t report others.

To do that, I’d need to go out and actually talk to organisations about it.

1. Getting Away From The Desk

That was a something of an “aha moment” for me. It set the stage for the rest of the work that was to follow.

From there, I went out to have those initial discussions of “well, why don’t you report on this?” This was the start of me gathering some answers – enabling me to better connect my academic work to the realities of industry. It opened the door to both future discussions, and some wider explorations.

For example, I looked at the link between reporting and political influence, going back through reports from around the 1930s of bank and retail companies, looking at what these said about the employment of women and ethnic minorities and linked that to the political discourse at the time. It showed how this can be manipulated by societal thinking. And that was quite illuminating.

• Developing Frameworks

From all of the voluntary work I was doing, early on, I became involved in developing reporting frameworks – which then led me to become involved with judging sustainability reports.

That real connection of the voluntary engagement work was quite a powerful driver for influencing my research ideas. It gave my work that instant real-life application and focus. It made the ideas I was developing and sharing something that was relevant to what was going on in the world around us at the time. Of course, a degree of scepticism about practice and policy initiatives is always needed.

It’s important to me to ensure that my research will matter. It’s also very satisfying doing things that will inform modern practice and, by extension for me, policy.

Having that commitment, that personal investment, has guided me to where I am today.

• Joining Boards

Other important moments were becoming Chair of Institute of Chartered Accountant’s Sustainability Panel guiding their sustainability policy and Chair of the Global Sustainability Standards Board – positions that have brought my academic and industry lives together and benefitted both.

Knowing the importance of having a conceptual framework for reporting in place, as well as understanding the need for developing an approach that’s evidence based and logical, and is feasible for industry to follow is vital. I draw on both academic input and industrial experience and insight.

Such work must speak to industry. It must be logical; it needs structure so it can be put into effect and followed. It also needs evidence, to encourage it’s use.

You can’t present industry with a theoretical idea and leave them to connect the dots of what it is to how it might actually work.

For research to have a real application in industry, this need to be done for them, and it needs wider support and backing.

Can you share one idea or a theory of somebody else’s that you admire? 

Rob Gray’s work into analysing the different approaches that businesses and accountants take to accounting for social and environmental issues, or reporting on their impacts on sustainable development is something I’ve benefitted from reading.

He critiqued the ways in which they were shoring up current ways of thinking versus facilitating real change. Such analysis is vital if we are to erase old patterns and processes that have contributed to today’s challenges.

Q: Is there one idea you have yet to put out into the world? Or something that you would love to see developed more?

I do think that accounting, reporting, reporting processes, internal controls and external assurance engagements will remain part of the picture for what I do next.

I’m currently focusing my work on companies in various stages of transition to integrating sustainable development considerations. Each company has its own different internal control systems, different methods, beliefs and values etc. If we can understand how this transformation occurs and, most importantly, what makes it stick, we can aid other organisations in facilitating further change.

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