Assessment of students' perception towards developing a course in environmental accounting

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to assess the students' perception about the importance of incorporating environmental reporting practices, standards, and other issues in Management Accounting course. Design/methodology/approach – Environmental issues provide a unique, timely, and important focus for developing a course in Indian management pedagogy, which shall help in demonstrating the usefulness of environmental accounting information in supporting corporate environmental strategies while assessing environmental performance. Assessment measurements that may capture the impact of reformed academic programs are necessary to judge the success and failure of management education reforms. This paper carries out such an assessment process by offering a course on environmental accounting as an intervention, to a sample of 28 management students enrolled in a higher educational institution in India imparting management education. A questionnaire is administered to these students before and after the intervention in order to understand the difference of their perception level. Findings – The results suggests a significant difference in the perception level of students about the utility of incorporating environmental reporting practices in Management Accounting course before and after the administration of the reformed program. Originality/value – The paper is unique in its attempt to understand the Indian management students' perception of knowledge and usefulness with environmental accounting in their regular course, from which a more detailed evaluation can be derived. Further work based on this preliminary finding may be used to develop a proposed environmental accounting course framework for management students in India.