During the last 15 years the debate on sustainability as well as on social and environmental accounting (SEA) has considerably increased. These issues have become very important subjects of, not only academic research, but also regulators' interventions throughout the world. The request to organisations for becoming more accountable and sustainable is wide, coming from not only academics and practitioners but also from analyst and the market.
The review of the existing literature on the subject focuses mainly on external reporting.
This paper aims to investigate if and how MCS have a role in implementing sustainable strategies within organisations and how it is set or modified in order to support this process. Thus, the main research questions are:
RQ1. How MCS support the implementation of sustainability focused strategies? How formal and informal controls work together in order to allow the achievement of sustainable goals as well as the integration of sustainable principle with organisation culture?
RQ2. What pattern of change is followed by MCS when a strategic change in a “sustainable” direction occurs?
The paper is organised as follows. As a starting point, we shortly review the existing literature on the subject (Section 2). Then, a brief description of the research methodology is provided (Section 3). This is followed by the case study description (Section 4) and discussion (Section 5). Finally, some preliminary conclusions and some limitations of the study are outlined.