The unbridled industrial growth has led to increased concern about global warming and environmental degradation. Due to this increased concern, the business organizations are voluntarily reporting environment-related information in their financial statements and disclosures. Despite the initiatives of these companies regarding environmental disclosures, environmental reporting and disclosures are not adequate in India. This poses a challenge for Indian Business Schools to incorporate environmental perspectives in their course curriculum, especially Environmental Accounting, to equip the future managers with different facets of environmental accounting for improved level of environmental disclosures by Indian firms. The present study attempts to assess the perception of the stakeholders, including management students, academicians, industry practitioners and representatives of regulatory bodies, regarding the incorporation of environmental accounting in the curriculum of Indian management education. The results suggest that these respondents consider environmental accounting to be an emerging issue, requiring further development due to its perceived usefulness as a subject to any organization. The study concludes that there is support for environmental accounting to be incorporated into Indian management education programs and offers some suggestions on the topics that are considered most relevant from our sample of Indian stakeholders.

Indiscriminate deforestation, rapid industrialization, rampant construction, and unprecedented increase in fossil fuel-run vehicles have contributed to the alarming levels of environmental pollution globally. These environmental threats are becoming a significant societal risk factor. The continuous rise in the environmental pollution in the last two decades has been predominantly ascribed to the industrial activities (Pahuja, 2007). The industries operate in the society utilizing the environmental resources, thereby creating a non-separable relationship amongst corporate, stakeholders and the environment through their interaction (Tinker et al., 1991; Owen et al., 1997; Lehman, 2001; Everett, 2004; and Cooper et al., 2005). The humankind, as a result, is demanding an environmentally responsible behavior on the part of businesses (Dillard et al., 2005) to reduce the damage caused by their actions and protect the resources and environment (Sen et al., 2010). In response to the demands of the stakeholders, some of the organizations are taking up various initiatives to curtail the environmental degradation, while some critics suggest that many corporations are not actively managing their environmental impacts and any such environmental reporting is legitimating or ‘green wash’ (Sen et al., 2010, p. 96). The government and regulatory bodies are also actively participating by framing rules pertaining to environmental issues to minimize the adverse environmental impacts caused by these organizations. In recent times, governments of different countries have been taking the help of environmental management graduates, and this has led to the increase in demand for such graduates. Due to the rising demand, environmental management has become an integral part of management pedagogy across the globe.

Various courses related to environmental management like environmental economics and management, environmental management, environmental marketing, environmental law, environmental management systems, green management, energy and corporate social responsibility, business ethics and sustainable development are being offered by different management institutions. In spite of the availability of several courses relating to environmental management education, the inclusion of Environmental Accounting as a subject in management education will be of immense use to all the stakeholders, as accounting education is a channel between academic research, policy making, technical and theoretical accounting developments, theories of pedagogy, and interdisciplinary insights into sustainable development and practices (Editorial, 2010). There is a recognition by practitioners, academics, business and political communities that accounting may have a role in helping corporations reorient their business actions to augment their awareness of how they interact with (and damage) the biosphere (Bebbington et al., 1994). Environmental accounting offers potential not only to develop critical insight into the practice of and analytic engagement with accounting practice, but it also could work as an instrument for changing accountants’ behavior in practice (Gray et al., 1994; and Gibson, 1997 cited in De Aguiar and Fearfull, 2010, p. 65). The integration of social and environmental accounting into traditional accounting subjects can be advantageous (Sefick et al., 1997). One problem with how the corporate sector deals with social and environmental accounting is the delegation of environmental responsibilities to environment and sustainability managers (Sundin, 2010). This approach may create conflicts between senior managers as they do not possess sufficient understanding of ecological issues and what could and should be done to reduce environmental impacts (Sundin and Wainwright, 2010, p. 84). The incorporation of environmental accounting, as a subject, in the course curriculum of management education can help to equip the future managers to be conversant with different perspectives of environmental accounting (Pattanayak et al., 2011). All managers (with a background in environmental accounting) may then better understand the conflicts in resource allocation decisions when attempting to satisfy multiple financial and non-financial stakeholder interests (Sundin and Wainwright, 2010, p. 85).

Accounting Research and Audit Practices, Indiscriminate deforestation, rapid industrialization, rampant construction, Designing, Course Curriculum, Environmental Accounting, Indian Stakeholders.