ENVIRONMENTAL COST INTERNALISATION: THE TRANSFORMATION OF CORPORATION AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION.

The aim of this paper is to propose an analytical framework for the study of the conditions favouring the internalisation of environmental costs as a recurrent practice integrated in corporations' current accounting practices. We examine this transformation through the history of another accounting transformation, that of amortization. This historical approach allows us to deconstruct environmental accounting and to provide another path to the concept of externalities (and environmental liabilities). We will examine, as the main events marking the route, the representation of the environment in which the conceptualisation of accounting externalities is embedded, the non-accounting valuation models from which the concept of externalities draws its source, the confrontations between contradictory accounting logics that have retarded its implementation, and finally the experimentation sites that have served as pioneers leading to the dissemination of environmental accounting. These sites are more than examples of environmental accounting implementations; they are the basis for the establishment of regulations regarding the internalisation of externalities and the symptoms of the transformation of a corporation as a social institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]