TITLE:
Drivers and Barriers of Sustainability Reporting in the Greek Public Forest Service
AUTHORS:
Konstantinos G. Papaspyropoulos, Dimitrios Karamanolis
KEYWORDS:
Public Sector Sustainability Reporting, Accountability, Forest Service, Material Flow Cost Accounting, Greece
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Accounting,
Vol.5 No.3,
July
18,
2016
ABSTRACT: The present research focuses on the Public Forest Service’s accountability practices. The Public Forest Service in Greece is used as a research case. This organization produces annually an “Activity Report” based on lagging indicators, presenting to the public past activities in order to manage forest and natural resources in Greece. However, there is no information about negative impacts, no target setting and no indication about sustainability reporting practices. Therefore, the factors that could push the Public Forest Service in Greece to improve its sustainability reporting are explored. Discussions with the expert foresters who are responsible for the data collection and construction of the organization’s Activity Report take place for finding out the drivers and barriers of improving such a report to a sustainability report. The results show that the determinants can be divided into internal and external and that in the current framework it will be very difficult for the organization to use methods and indicators that could increase its accountability and sustainability reporting practices.