Research interests
Charika’s primary research interest focuses on the role and emergence of non-financial reporting and auditing practices (e.g. sustainability reporting and integrated reporting). She is also interested to explore the role of regulations and how they contribute to the development of these practices. These, therefore, expands her research projects to include standard setting process related to those practice; and the professionalisation of accounting firms to promote these non-financial assurance services.
The interest on non-financial reporting and assurance practice continues from her doctoral research project on sustainability assurance practice in the UK, where she has engaged with accounting firms and non-accounting firms to explore the assurance practice from its practical settings. This makes the research interest one of the core areas to her current research.
She has presented her work at various international conferences and doctoral colloquia, during her doctoral years. Those include the International Perspective of Accounting (IPA) Conference in 2015, and the CSEAR International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research in 2014.
Publication
Book chapter
Channuntapipat C. (2021). Assurance Services for Sustainability Reporting and Beyond. In: Bebbington, J., Larrinaga, C., O’Dwyer, B. & Thomson, I. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Environmental Accounting. Taylor & Francis. [Link to published chapter]
Channuntapipat C. (2018) Problematising Sustainability Assurance Practice: Roles of Sustainability Assurance Providers. In: Gal G., Akisik O., Wooldridge W. (eds) Sustainability and Social Responsibility: Regulation and Reporting. Accounting, Finance, Sustainability, Governance & Fraud: Theory and Application. Springer, Singapore [Link to published chapter]
Journal article
Channuntapipat C. (2021) “Can sustainability report assurance be a collaborative process and practice beyond the ritual of verification?”, Business Strategy and the Environment. [Link to published article]
Channuntapipat C., Samsonova-Taddei A., Turley S. (2020) “Variation in sustainability assurance practice: An analysis of accounting versus non-accounting providers“, The British Accounting Review, Vol. 52 No. 2, pp. 556 – 580. [Link to published article] [Link to ResearchGate]
Channuntapipat C., Samsonova-Taddei A., Turley S. (2019) “Exploring Diversity in Sustainability Assurance Practice: Evidence from Assurance Providers in the UK”, Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 556 – 580. [Link to published article] [Link to ResearchGate]
Channuntapipat C. (2018) “Assurance for Service Organisations: Contextualising Accountability and Trust”, Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 33 Issue: 4 [Link to published article]
Doctoral Thesis
Channuntapipat, C., 2016. Sustainability Assurance in Practice: Evidence from Assurance Providers in the United Kingdom. Ph.D. Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester
Working papers and research projects
Current Project / Working paper
– Exploring Thai listed companies’ corporate sustainability reporting ans the stakeholder involvement in corprorate materiality analysis
– Audit profession, accounting education and social mobility: UK Context
– Accounting profession and public interest: Thai context
Finished projects
– Net Zero Accounting for Net Zero UK [Links to the articles 1 & 2]
– Corporate social responsibility in Fashion industry: Paradox in fashion design plagiarism [Links to related articles 1 & 2 & 3 & YouTube]
– SDG Goal 17 (Thailand): International Partnerships toward SDG through Finance and Trade
Conferences
- 30th International Perspective of Accounting (IPA) Conference, Stockholm Business School (July 2015)
– Emerging Scholars’ Colloquium paper: Development of Sustainability Assurance Practice: The Evidence from Sustainability Assurance Providers in the UK
- 26th CSEAR International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research, University St Andrews (Aug 2014)
– Emerging Scholars’ Colloquium paper: Investigating the Black Box of Sustainability Assurance
- Rethinking Capitals: Going Beyond the Financial Conference, Chartered Accountant Hall, London (Dec 2014)
– Delivering a short presentation about sustainability assurance practice (see proposal document)
Research work – PhD project
Charika’s PhD thesis was entitled “Sustainability Assurance in Practice: Evidence from Assurance Providers in the UK”. She explored sustainability assurance practice from the perspective of sustainability assurance providers to understand how they perceive their roles and the purposes of the practice; and how such perceptions and understandings affect the conduct and development of the practice.
Sustainability assurance has been a significant area of development in corporate reporting during the last two decades, but one that so far has been subject to limited research. Existing studies in this field have mainly tried to understand the characteristics of assurance statements, instead of enquiring beyond such outputs to obtain evidence from sustainability assurance providers themselves. Her interest in this research area is to explore sustainability assurance practice in its context beyond the assurance statements. In particular, She is interested in how decisions in the process are made and what could influence such decisions.
This project provides methodological and empirical contributions by providing evidence on the process associated with sustainability assurance practice through interviews with different types of organisations providing SA services. Particularly, I developed my theoretical framework from Actor-network perspective and the notion of boundary object to explore the conceptualisation and operationalisation of sustainability assurance. The four variations of sustainability assurance practice are proposed as one of the main outcomes of the project.
