Anet Magdalena Smit

Environmental issues are of increasing concern to a variety of stakeholders in most countries all around the world. There is a growing consensus that conventional accounting practices simply do not provide adequate information to support decision-making in order to manage the environment. Environmental management accounting (EMA) is a combined approach that provides for the transition of data from financial accounting, cost accounting and mass balances to increase material efficiency, reduce environmental impacts and risks and, ultimately, lead to the reduction of environmental costs. This paper investigates the practise of EMA in the chemical industry. A questionnaire was administrated to a selected group of participants who are employees in the chemical industry in South Africa. Different functional roles from different types of chemical companies were identified to participate. The findings of this paper indicate that there is a good level of awareness of EMA in the South African chemical industry. Most organizations are applying sound environmental practices and are adopting environmental strategies and tools to improve their current status. Different levels of awareness exist between the different functional roles in the respective organizations. Operational and capital environmental information are disclosed and organizations do generate and record information on physical and monetary environmental management accounting

In the aftermath of the credit crisis of 2007-2009, there was considerable public frustration with regard to executive remuneration, particularly in the banking industry. Consequently, the need for regulated remuneration practices became essential. For this purpose, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) aims to align risk and reward by encouraging good risk management and discouraging excessive risk-taking. This paper aims to demonstrate the correlation between the health of the banking industry and economic activity, as well as the change in executive remuneration pre and post the credit crisis. In addition, the paper aims to measure the correlation between executive remuneration in the form of cash and equity, and risk-taking. The unique features of banking emphasized the interconnectedness to the broader economy. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to perform these analyses. It was found that as executive remuneration in the form of cash increased, risk-taking decreased. In addition, as executive remuneration in the form of equity decreased, risk-taking increased. In summary, the research points to the fact that executives have in fact been remunerated in terms of equity. However, the results indicate that this may not have enticed the executives to take on more risks