Water Management Accounting Indicators:Meta-synthesis Approach and Balanced Scorecard Approach

Water crisis is one of the greatest challenges that world population currentlyis faced with. Since the substance of water accounting procedures is changed in tandem with the complexity of the issues which businesses faced in their routine activities, it can be seen that rising in indicators used for management and water accounting is one of the most controversial accounting issues in the world. Indeed, despite various accounting systems throughout the world, none of them can contain all the necessary indicators conclusively. The aim of this research is to provide efficient indicators for water management accounting paradigm and to present a comprehensive pattern for this discipline as well in Iran.

This study adopts the6 modern dimensions of balanced scorecard and meta-synthesis methods to reach its targets. In doing so, based on searching the data on national and international databases during the period of 1980 to 2020, 32 particular studies which posit a direct relationship with water accounting and management have been chosen. Afterwards, these selected studies were entered into MAXQDA software for coding and further investigating.

There are 52 distinct codes base on the codding process that among them, the index of environmental efficiency (8), cost of water (8), volume of water exploitation (8), and index of used water (7) maintain the most importance with respect to the number of references, respectively. In the next step, these codes were classified into 20 themes and the themes are grouped into 6 concepts. Finally, a water accounting exhaustive model is provided by using the meta-synthesis methodand is appovaled with the opinion of experts.

Based on the evidence provided, the results of this research can be used by Professional accountants and planners in the field of water sources,accountants and managers in the regional water companies, and water and sewage urban companies, and related industries in Iran.