Editorial: Multi-capital accounting models: from infancy to teenage years

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a concise research agenda for multi-capital accounting and its integration with sustainability science.

🏢実務担当者:Offers a framework for understanding how multi-capital reporting models align with ISSB/CSRD expectations and double materiality.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for harmonization in multi-capital accounting standards to avoid fragmentation across jurisdictions.

We have the pleasure of introducing this themed section on multi-capital accounting. In the first part of this editorial, we will introduce the background to the section. In the second part, we will explore how accounting for sustainable development and multi-capital accounting relate to one another. In the third part, we will present the articles of the themed section. In the fourth part, avenues for future research will be discussed. A short conclusion will ensue.Multi-capital accounting refers to models that take into consideration not just economic data, but rather data on the environmental, social and human consequences of organisational activities over a given period. Because they focus on organisations, they differ in scope from national environmental or social accounts, as well as from product footprints. Consideration of non-financial dimensions is expected to better inform the user of the accounts on the non-financial “performance” of the organisation. As such, its development is very much associated with the pursuit of sustainable development.The guest editors of this themed section have carried out research on multi-capital accounting for the last 12 years, in close relationship with practitioners from corporations interested in adopting this type of accounting as well as with consultants eager to add this service to their offer. many engaged researchers before us (Lamberton, 2000; Bebbington and Gray, 2001; Antheaume, 2004; Herbohn, 2005), our first attempts failed to transform the businesses for which we developed models, as the models were not used beyond the first experiments (Taïbi et al., 2020).Nonetheless, the interest of practitioners in Europe remained high enough to enable the funding of several research projects focused on multi-capital accounting (through private contributions to foundations and European research funds). This themed section was initiated by the members of such a research project, created to develop an integrated multi-capital accounting model based on the concept of planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015) and social foundations (Raworth, 2018). Our aim was to enable organisations to evaluate how they contribute to the respect of these boundaries and foundations and to transform themselves accordingly. The final research seminar organised by the team was the opportunity to bring together multiple actors to reflect on two questions:The contributions to this themed section derive from these discussions.The title of this paper also stems from this context. After an infancy characterised by multiple relatively small-scale attempts from the academic and the consulting worlds in the 2010s, the field of multi-capital accounting practice has been shaped by the creation of large global alliances, involving major audit firms, multinational corporations and some research centres (such as the Natural Capitals Coalition, the Value Balancing Alliance or the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts) in the first half of the 2020s. Over the last ten years, some countries, for example, France, also witnessed the creation of dedicated research initiatives hosted by universities with both public and private funding (such as the ecological accounting chair and the positive business UNESCO Chair in Paris, the multi-capital global performance chair in Nantes or the triple accounting chair in Marseille).This institutionalisation is aligned with the work carried out by sustainability reporting standard setters, although with a time lag. Following the creation of multiple projects, there has been a “consolidation” of previously separated private reporting standard setters under the umbrella of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) and the evolution of performance reporting regulation through the European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU CSRD) (European Commission, 2022). The multi-capital accounting scene, now entering its teenage years, might also follow the same trend. It is already starting, as the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts, mentioned above, has now become part of the Natural Capitals Coalition, also mentioned above.Multi-capital accounting (MCA) systems emerged in the wake of the diffusion of the IIRC (2013) integrated reporting framework and are a continuation of the full cost accounting models and environmental accounting attempts dating back to the seventies (Taïbi et al., 2020). MCA research is interested in the human interactions and processes in relation to the definition and commensuration of non-financial drivers of organisational performance. Non-financial dimensions, called capitals in all models this themed section refers to, can describe elements from nature (resources, climate stability, soil, biodiversity…), society (social interactions, education, health, infrastructure) or individuals (skills, creativity…). The data inputs are measured in monetary and physical units. They include legal compliance costs, taxes and fines paid. Others require an evaluation of social consequences such as life expectancy loss due to air pollution. This loss can also be expressed as a social or economic cost. Others can be flows of energy or raw materials used. The data outputs of MCA models include units of environmental impact or units describing social change, but also monetary values.To account for non-financial dimensions, the models borrow from financial accounting concepts such as profit and loss or P&L (Kering), costs (Antheaume, 2004; Herbohn, 2005), value (Hendriksen et al., 2016) and capital (Rambaud and Richard, 2015; Ingram et al., 2024). While the concepts of flow and allocation are present across all models, their definitions vary depending on which systems view is dominant in the conceptors’ mind. The differences between the models are related to which side of the balance sheet the concept of capital should refer to. We have identified three broad visions:While these visions rely on accounting concepts commonly used in practice, the actual frameworks chosen to measure these elements are framed by ontological preconceptions of human–nonhuman relations, by the role and responsibilities of public and private organisations in socio-natural systems and the level of accountability to consider.For example, accounting systems that consider manufactured capital as a possible substitution to natural capital destroyed in the process of creating economic value are described as serving “weak sustainability”, when refusing this substitution is described as strong sustainability (Pearce and Turner, 1990; Pelenc and Ballet, 2015). In a weak sustainability framework, bees destroyed by pesticides could be replaced with miniature drones or all crops depending on bees could be genetically engineered to become self-pollinating, thus creating new market opportunities and solving the problem of service deterioration. On the other hand, a strong sustainability approach would consider this ecosystem re-engineering as an irreversible debt towards natural capital.Although one can build bridges across the three visions, we hold the view that MCA comes closer to accounting for sustainable development if the model is not just a record of stocks and flows, but if it also includes natural and social thresholds. This helps express corporate accountability for the well-being of humans and nature, beyond legal boundaries, to include the entity’s area of influence. It can thus serve the goal of double materiality analysis introduced by the EU CSRD (European Commission, 2022).MCA models developed by practitioners and researchers are in essence rooted in environmental science to evaluate organisational consequences on the environment. Birkin (1996) and Milne (1996) highlight the need to acknowledge the “burden” that human activities impose on the environment and to account for the respect of natural “carrying capacities”. Early multi-capital attempts by Lamberton (2000), Rambaud and Richard (2015), Taibi (2019) or later ones such as Gibassier (2025) consider sustainability as a system-level condition. It needs to be translated at an organisation-specific level and include the concept of carrying capacity. Other proposals, such as the “True Value” methodology (Hendriksen et al., 2016) fail to incorporate this concept, mostly because they rely on the cost of externalities to value impacts and translate all non-financial dimensions into one monetary unit. The externality model and its underlying economic optimum philosophy, does not align well with a respect of carrying (or assimilative) capacities and can lead on the contrary to “a total destruction of the environment’s assimilative capacity” (Pearce, 1976). By expressing all impacts at the economic value of actors’ utility, this valuation commonly obfuscates physical realities.In other words, MCA studies whether these dimensions should and can be translated into a common unit and referred to a higher-level objective; and how this could be done and reported. As such MCA researchers contribute to the literature on social and environmental accounting (SEA). They question not only reporting practices, but also the framing, implementation and associated visions of sustainable development, corporate impacts and accountability. Central to this enquiry is the nature of the information produced and its ability to inform corporate trajectories for sustainable development. Following academic frustration with SEA research’s inability to efficiently address sustainable development challenges, Bebbington and Larrinaga (2014) call for accounting research to position itself in sustainability science. They frame the latter as an approach that widens the object of research beyond organisational boundaries, includes “a transdisciplinary approach” and considers the consequences of its application on individuals, societies and the environment [Bebbington and Larrinaga (2014, p. 396)].Within this stream of r

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