The Emergence of Environmental Management Accounting

Based on a study of the emergence of EMA as a new managerial domain and of how EMA costs the environment, the paper examines the institutionalisation of EMA. This is accomplished by linking EMA to the broader discourse of economic efficiency. Moreover, the paper contends that the institutionalisation of EMA is supported through the legitimacy it produces for individuals (notably environmental managers) and organizations. Through the use of different metrics, EMA frames the environment in terms of the well known – money – and establishes equivalence between the actions to protect the environment and changes in the bottom line