THE EFFECTS OF ACCOUNTANTS' COMPETENCE. EXECUTIVES' SUPPORT AND SACIAL ON THE EFFICIENCY OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING USED BY THE ISO 14001 CERTIFIED MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN THAILAND

Abstract

Environment Accounting is an important instrument that helps manage business organizations along with the environmental consciousness of their management teams. Environment Accounting is influenced by the accountants' competence, executive support, and social pressure in such a way that it produces information essential for strategic management. Thus, the objective of this research is to study the effects of accountants' competence, executives' support, and social pressure on the efficiency of environmental accounting used by the ISO 14001 certified of 5 business groups in the manufacturing firms in Thailand. The three hypotheses were set up to determine whether there was an impact of the three factors mentioned earlier on the efficiency of environmental accounting. The three factors are independent variables; whereas the efficiency of environmental accounting is the only dependent variable. The data collection was made through the open-ended questionnaires based on 5 level of the Likert Scale. They were completed by respondents who were mostly accounting managers of five different types of business firms under the manufacturing sector in Thailand. The research shows that 1) The accounts' competence in terms of professional knowledge do not has an impact on the efficiency of environmental accounting but professional skills, and values have an impact on the efficiency of environmental accounting. 2) The executives' support in the form of budgets, environmental policies, and training courses have a positive impact on the efficiency of environmental accounting. 3) The social pressure has a appositive impact on the efficiency of environmental accounting.

The research study also relies on the opinion of accounting executives in the area of the knowledge and competence of accountants, the support of the management team, the social pressure and the effectiveness of the environmental accounting. Such qualitative information would be useful to the management of the environmental accounting by the public and private firms. It may be helpful for future research.