The salient identity of professional accountants in climate change and sustainability accounting for SMEs

Abstract

This study aims to explore the salient identity and the perceptions of professional accountants by focusing on the interplay between individual drivers and the self-perceived salient identity in the context of climate change and sustainability accounting in the evolving environment of mandatory sustainability reporting regulations. This study surveys registered professional accountants in two Italian regions: Trentino and Puglia and collects 11 open-ended responses. Based on 212 responses from the survey and open-ended responses, this study frames them through the role-identity salience framework (Callero, 1985). The majority of the responses are highlighted as salient identities of professional accountants. The majority of professional accountants perceive their salient identities within the broader financial and sustainability accounting. However, they view their crucial roles to go beyond existing financial accounting practices and perform sustainability accounting to achieve Sustainability Development Goals. A key contradiction emerges in that their roles are simultaneously constrained by bureaucratic obligations, regulatory unfamiliarity and institutional inertia, indicating an identity variance. This study offers insights into professional accountants’ perceptions of sustainability regulations and standards in a European Union member state, which professional bodies and regulators may incorporate in disseminating and streamlining the regulatory guidelines. Other jurisdictional professional bodies and policymakers may also use these findings to develop accountants’ regulatory knowledge. Specifically, the findings of this study highlight the urgent need for professional bodies to move beyond technical standard-setting and actively engage in identity regulation to encompass sustainability accounting. The salient identity crucially highlights accountants’ evolving social roles in balancing financial and sustainability accounting practices. It highlights accountants’ identities in bringing social practices to shape the future of the accounting profession. In the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) context specifically, the findings underscore the consequential social role of professional accountants as capability-builders whose engagement with sustainability accounting directly shapes SMEs’ capacity to contribute to the broader sustainability transition. This study offers novel insights into professional accountants’ individual identity constructions from the internal perspective in the changing situation of climate change accounting and sustainability reporting regulations. Through the lens of role-identity salience framework and with a focus on SMEs, this study shows unique findings of accountants’ opinions of their internal identities and highlights the most important (salient) ones within their self-definitions of contributing to and achieving Sustainability Development Goals.