An investigation into full cost accounting in a higher education context

This thesis heeds calls for social and environmental accounting researchers to<br/>intervene directly to develop new accountings and promote practical change, and<br/>to measure the type of change and reasons for non-change using theoretical<br/>frameworks.<br/>The thesis first selects and develops an appropriate meta theoretical framework<br/>from the social and environmental accounting literature for analysis purposes,<br/>drawing on dialogics, organisational change theory and institutional theory, as<br/>well as Soft Systems Methodology tools. Existing Full Cost Accounting (‘FCA’)<br/>applications are critiqued using this framework and a utopian vision for a new<br/>application is constructed. The thesis then undertakes a new, explicitly dialogic<br/>application of Full Cost Accounting (‘FCA’) in a new sector (Higher Education). It<br/>does so following calls in the literature to develop further FCA as a worthwhile<br/>technique to correct prices and redress the asymmetry of information found in<br/>(un)sustainability reporting, towards something that better demonstrates the<br/>(un)sustainability of an organisation’s practices. The new application is<br/>undertaken in a deliberately dialogic manner as the literature posits that social<br/>and environmental accounting engagements incorporating dialogic motifs are<br/>more likely to engender change.<br/>Methodologically, the thesis utilises a variant of Action Research, Soft Systems<br/>Methodology, to conduct dialogic model building and calculations via learning for<br/>action cycles.<br/>The new application is then critiqued using the theoretical framework<br/>constructed, in order to answer the objectives of the thesis, which are to: (a)<br/>further evaluate the difficulties inherent in the FCA process; (b) determine<br/>whether advances in scientific knowledge and sustainability awareness now<br/>make FCA calculations more feasible (as compared to previous FCA applications); and (c) ascertain whether FCA engagement

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral Thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

King's College London

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Davies, Jared

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Solomon, Jill Frances
• Barone, Elisabetta

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

oai:kclpure.kcl.ac.uk:studenttheses/aeb02426-f22f-4114-a549-9ee4a0c7cb24

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kclpure.kcl.ac.uk:studenttheses/aeb02426-f22f-4114-a549-9ee4a0c7cb24