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Environmental management systems aim to ensure legal compliance on the one hand and continuous improvement of environmental performance on the other hand. Due to its cross-sectional character, environmental management systems affect all parts of the organisation. Another cross-sectional system is the management accounting system which intends to support ex-ante internal management decision-making processes. The overlapping part of both systems deals with environmental issues in business planning processes and is commonly referred to as environmental management accounting. However, the field of environmental management accounting is still young and corresponding methods are currently under development.

Besides financial goals, companies increasingly start formulating strategic environmental goals. However, the management and control of these goals remains a challenge. Thus, the formulation of strategic environmental goals in qualitative terms limits their management and control. On the other hand, the systematic integration of strategic environmental goals in management accounting processes, such as investment appraisals and decisions, represents a research gap.

Therefore, this thesis aims to develop a method that is able to systematically integrate financial and environmental data in investment processes to support the achievement of strategic environmental and financial goals of companies. This new integrated investing method intends to provide a sufficient degree of scientific quality on the one hand and practical applicability on the other hand.

In context of this thesis, a deficit analysis assesses reasons why current methods of environmental management accounting have not established as common business practice so far. During the first part of the subsequent method development a set of seven requirements is composed. On basis of these requirements additional methods of environmental management and management accounting systems are evaluated resulting in a final set of three approaches representing the basis of developing the new integrated investing method. After developing and describing the new integrated investing method, the method is applied in seven case studies within the Volkswagen Group. This method application verifies the method’s practical applicability as well as its ability to manage and control strategic environmental and financial goals.

In conclusion, this dissertation contributes to the development and application of a new integrated investing method that aims to ensure a sufficient degree of scientific quality and practical applicability. With the help of this method, it is able to systematically integrate environmental impacts in investment processes of companies in order to manage and control the achievement of strategic environmental and financial goals.

The recommendations for future research address the limitation of the Ecological Scarcity Method, on which the integrated investing method is based, as well as the application of the new integrated investing method in contexts outside the Volkswagen Group.