Abstract
The growing interest in the financial, social and environmental sustainability of all organizations as a whole, as well as the growing sentiment for their responsibility towards the community, lead organizations to face the challenge of evaluating and communicating their non-financial performance through the social accounting. The issue assumes a peculiar meaning within social enterprises (SEs) aimed at pursuing the general interest. In these organizations, the disclosure of the value created for both internal and social stakeholder raises to rank of survival condition because the development, reputation and credibility of the SEs are closely linked to the institution's ability to reach and communicate externally the social value created. This work aims to highlight the peculiar resources of the SEs and demonstrate that, in most cases, they allow SEs to achieve financial sustainability. Social and economic value will be assessed and the share of income that cannot be distributed, regardless of the relevant regulatory provisions, will be emphasized. To achieve these goals, a multiple case study is used to measure the value added distributed to internal and external stakeholders by adapting Mook model to SEs. The results show that volunteering and donations contribute not only to the social value generated by SEs but to their economic sustainability as well, being considered as the engine of development of the economic system as a whole. This paper contributes to the literature by focusing on the contribution of liberalities and volunteering to consolidate the financial structure of the SE and to development of the economic system as a whole.
Highlights
The theme of social accounting has been widely discussed in literature, and many reporting tools of social and environmental performances are used in practice
The first studies on social accounting focused on the impact of economic activities on the environment, but they later extended to the broader area of social aspects
The integrated income statement (IIS) distinguishes from Mook‟s framework for following main aspects: (a) every donations of time and money are extract to the value added, (b) the statement will be tested on social enterprises (SEs) instead donative organizations and (c) the social and economic statement proposed emphasizes internal resources that cannot be distributed to stakeholder
Summary
The theme of social accounting has been widely discussed in literature, and many reporting tools of social and environmental performances are used in practice. Related to conventional financial accounting, social accounting is a new interdisciplinary field that emerged in the 1970s following pressure from Economics scholars who were reconsidering the role and purpose of companies. This was due to the growing interest in sustainability and organizational responsibilities towards society, which pushes organizations - public and private (Pollifroni, 2013), profit and non-profit (Mook, Richmond & Quarter, 2009) - to face the challenge of evaluating and communicating their economic sustainability and non-financial performance (Crucke & Decramer, 2016). Social accounting can be defined as “a systematic analysis of the effects of an organization on its communities of interest or stakeholders, with stakeholders‟ input as part of the data that are analysed for the accounting statement” (Quarter, Mook & Richmond, 2003, p. 3)
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