AAA Spark Meeting of the Regions

How to Include ESG in Your Accounting Courses by Revising Existing Assignments

• In Event: How to Include ESG in your Accounting Courses by Revising Existing Assignments

Abstract

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is emerging as an important topic to the accounting profession. However, accounting faculty recognize the difficulty of incorporating ESG subject matter into an otherwise full accounting curriculum. Given the pervasive nature of data analytic concepts in all accounting courses, in this session we will discuss various use cases for incorporating ESG data into assignments in a wide range of accounting courses to provide students with exposure to ESG. For example, ESG data can be utilized in an introductory analytics course when teaching descriptive analytics. Given a sample of S&P 200 firms, students can determine various descriptive data points, including the average, median, mode, minimum and maximum values as well as other measures of central tendency of the ESG dataset for these largest firms. Students can also use the ESG dataset in Excel or Tableau to create charts and graphs that provide additional discussion points for the class material. Second, the ESG dataset can be used in a managerial accounting or auditing course to complete a time-series analysis, analyzing trends over time. Faculty can discuss the correlation between the increase in ESG activity with societal awareness of ESG priorities. Lastly, in an AIS or advanced analytics course, additional variables can be included through faculty demonstration of the ETL process to further explore relationships between ESG score and industry, firm size, and other financial accounting ratios. Students can complete a cluster analysis to further profile firms which exhibit varying degrees of ESG activity. How to access the ESG dataset as well as solution files for the assignment examples discussed in the presentation will be provided to those interested.

Authors

• Marcy Binkley, Lipscomb University

• Timothy S. Creel, Lipscomb University

• Susan Coomer Galbreath, Lipscomb University