Social Accounting for Sustainability: A Study in the Social Economy

Larraitz Lazkano,Ana Beraza

doi:10.3390/su11246894

Abstract

In order to understand an organization’s survival and growth, legitimacy plays a key role. This paper explains how social accounting can generate legitimacy for a social company and make companies more sustainable. The demand to know the value that different organizations generate or detract from society has increased since the global crisis of 2008. Sustainable organizations are those that positively impact all stakeholder groups. In this paper, an analysis of 20 Spanish social companies that have implemented or are going to implement social accounting is made. We analyzed, through interviews, the expectations and integration of social accounting, determining change-emerging factors occurring after the application of social accounting. For the qualitative analysis of the information collected, NVivo 12 was used, a software program adequate for qualitative and mixed-methods research. The main finding shows that most companies communicate results internally; thus, these companies expect a higher involvement in the implementation of social accounting. Social companies, since their value is fundamentally not centered on that which comes from commercial activity, need to evidence their effort on specific social values that do not go through the market, and so are not reflected in traditional financial statements.

Highlights

The social economy movement, regulated by the law 5/2011, from March 29, is formed by 42,000 companies in Spain, and represents 10% of Spanish Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 12.5% of employment, according to data from The Spanish Social Economy Employers’ Confederation (CEPES)
The companies that have not started yet were asked for their reasons and motivations for taking the decision to calculate their social value, the expectations they have, what they are going to do with the results, and the relationship they have with stakeholders
A few times, a consciousness about being a member of the social economy sector was seen as a couple of companies mentioned the need to see whether they fulfill the values that social companies must have or not have through social accounting

Summary

Introduction

The social economy movement, regulated by the law 5/2011, from March 29, is formed by 42,000 companies in Spain, and represents 10% of Spanish Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 12.5% of employment, according to data from The Spanish Social Economy Employers’ Confederation (CEPES). It can be considered a quickly growing sector, as 29,000 companies and 190,000 new job positions have been created within the last eight years. Social economy entities have values and principles that correspond to social, environmental, and ethical criteria, which can be included in public procurement documents

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