Carol Adams is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting in our Business School. She is a globally renowned expert in corporate accounting and sustainability reporting, focusing on its impact on business, society and the environment.
Most large corporations have some sustainability targets but how do they report on their performance against these and how do we know as consumers how they fare against others?
Professor Adams initially trained as a Chartered Accountant, however, her strong sense of social justice, and passion for fairness, ignited a desire to use her skills to make a more direct contribution to society. This is where Carol became a researcher and started looking at how organisations go about voluntary and mandatory reporting of non-financial information.
She was particularly interested in why companies kept records on workforce diversity for example, but did not report on other things such as employment of ethnic minorities, employment of women in senior positions.
Across her career, Carol has worked with sustainability leaders at large corporations to understand the way they report and how this impacts on data collection, performance monitoring and internal change management. She has worked with organisations in the UK and Australia such as Baillie Gifford, Cbus Superannuation Fund and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Carol has also been involved in policy initiatives, standard setting and advisory work, which she has sought to reflect across her research, teaching and PhD supervision. She currently chairs the Global Sustainability Standards Board that sets the GRI Standards. In this role she works alongside two Durham University alumni, Bruno Bastit and Izzy Ensor, highlighting our alumni’s significant influence on global sustainability reporting standards.
Carol is currently Chair of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland’s Sustainability Committee and Member of the Expert Panel of the King’s charity, Accounting for Sustainability.
Carol’s work has been cited over 23,000 times and several of her papers rank amongst the most cited papers in journals including papers in the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal and the British Accounting Review.
As an Emeritus professor she remains a valued part of our academic community, even into retirement. Her continued commitment to sustainability reporting and social justice continue to inspire.
Carol advocates for more organisations and regulators to adopt sustainability reporting standards ensuring they monitor, manage and report their most significant impacts on the environment, people and the economy.
In an increasingly polarised world Carol’s work emphasises the universal benefits of sustainability reporting.
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