Discus Stakeholders Regulations and Incentives

Discus Stakeholders Regulations and Incentives

1. What are the pressures on managers to report biased ecological impact
information to stakeholders? How might these be alleviated?
2. Regulation can no longer be viewed simply in terms of ‘command and control’
over companies. Discuss two alternatives to direct regulation and explain, by
using the notion of an enforcement pyramid, whether there is any link between
these alternatives and ‘command-and-control’ methods.
3. By using the five principles of regulatory design outlined in this chapter,
consider how ecological reporting to external stakeholders provides a fundamental foundation for regulation of relationships between companies and
stakeholders.
4. Are conventional financial accounting and external ecological accounting
complements to each other or substitutes for each other? Discuss.
5. What are the features of the US Toxic Release Inventory that other ecological
reporting systems should consider adopting? Are there any problems with the
TRI reporting system? If so, how can these be overcome?
6. How many chemicals should be reported on in toxic release and national
pollutant inventories and polluting emissions registers? What criteria have
affected your choice?

Discus Stakeholders Regulations and Incentives

7. Why is monitoring and information disclosure critical for the success of
emissions banking and trading?
8. Do the principles behind the indicators put forward by the UN Commission on
Sustainable Development have any connection with the principles behind
corporate external ecological reporting? Are there any important differences
between the two sets of principles? Explain.
9. What are information quality and environmental quality? Are they related? Why
is low-quality information said to drive out high-quality information?
10. How might low-quality information in ecological statements be improved? In
your answer, name two specific institutional mechanisms.
11. What assumptions underlie ecological accounting? Consider whether one
assumption behind ecological accounting and reporting is more important than
the other assumptions.
12. How do the notions of ‘going concern’ and ‘gone concern’ affect ecological
statements?
13. Do the needs for and uses of internal and consolidated ecological accounting
differ? If so, how? Are the two related?