The Centre for Research in Accountability, Governance and Sustainability (CRAGS) is dedicated to research and impactful work especially on accountability, governance and sustainability. DMU being the official United Nations Global Hub for the UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 16, its work is particularly interested in promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
While situated in the Faculty of Business and Law and within Leicester Castle Business School, the Centre for Research in Accountability, Governance and Sustainability (CRAGS) is De Montfort University’s interdisciplinary research centre acting as focal point for collaboration and research initiatives from all faculties of the university that share an interest in issues related to Accountability, Governance or Sustainability.
CRAGS takes a broad perspective and welcomes diverse methodologies and research approaches, especially the scientific (empirical and inductive) research methodology.
There are many topics that fall under the remit of CRAGS. Traditionally, CRAGS members have researched on corporate governance, accountability and transparency, ethics and sustainability reporting, CSR communication, financial reporting issues including earnings management, management accounting, public sector accounting, corporate disclosures practices, forensic accounting and auditing.
More recently, CRAGS has widened its scope to encourage interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research, including on institutional design, including the appropriate incentive structure to achieve collective goals, as well as mechanisms for meaningful accountability, effective and equitable governance. Accountability, governance and sustainability all refer to or aim at achieving the long-term goal of sustainable high performance in fairness.
The Centre has set itself the goal to reach beyond its traditional research areas to study successful institutional designs compatible with SDG 16, such as the East Asian High Growth design and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
CRAGS pursues a strategy to raise its international profile through international collaborations and links with policy-makers and stakeholders. It wishes to harness the expertise and enthusiasm of all other research centres in the faculty and university.