Gianfranco Rusconi

Social accounting in Italy: Origins and developments

Interest in social accounting in Italy initially developed in the mid 1970s but until the early 1990s it remained a principally academic interest. Since about the mid-1990s though, interest in social accounting amongst those in academe, business and the profession has grown significantly and towards the turn of the century some large Italian companies – especially in the energy and telecommunications industries were producing stand-alone social and/or environmental reports (Vicini, 1998). These reporting innovations remained, however, voluntary despite some limited activity in the area of regulation. One important initiative in this more recent period was the formation in 1998 of GBS (Gruppo di Studio per il Bilancio Sociale, a group composed of academics, practitioners, and consultants from different fields), with the aim of formulating a series of standards for the construction and diffusion of social accounts. This article represents an overview of how social accounting has developed in Italy and, in particular, the nature, role and influence of the theoretical framework developed within, what we will define later as, Economia Aziendale. The paper will not be particularly concerned with nomenclature and the term “social accounting” will be used to include the process of collation, preparation and publication of social and environmental information in the form of different social and environmental accounts. For noting only at this stage, generally, in Italy, bilancio sociale, bilancio ambientale, environmental reporting, bilancio di sostenibilita are the more commonly used terms. Some authors, (for example, Bartolomeo 1997 and Cavilli et al 2003) tend to distinguish between bilancio ambientale (considered as an internal management controlling tool) and environmental reporting (considered as an external instrument of communication).

Social Accounting, Ethics and Solidarity

Nowadays social accounting is becoming ever more widespread, and as a result its principles and guidelines are coming under closer scrutiny. Social accounting and business ethics are closely interconnected. First of all this is because the ethical aspects of business and also social accounting both pose a series of specific ethical questions, such as transparency, neutrality and coherence in relation to all those involved in a business activity, secondly, because the objects of social accounting are often data and information ‘with a high ethical content’ such as, for example, standard business praxis or the attitude and behaviour of a company towards its employees and consumers. Social accountants often use stakeholders as a reference point. Indeed, the ‘stakeholder approach’ is commonly used, albeit acritically and without distinguishing between different approaches such as strategic, descriptive and ethical. For example, when senior management holds itself responsible to ‘influential stakeholders’ such as US consumers or large, established European trade unions, we must ask ourselves the following question: what criteria can we use to distinguish between the authentic application of ethical principles and the adoption of sophisticated business strategies? The debate on ‘managing stakeholders’ also needs to clarify terminology: who really are stakeholders and what procedures should companies adopt to guarantee transparency in their dealings with them? An interesting debating point could be to relate the stakeholder approach with ‘solidarity.’ This concept centres on the primary importance of the human personality and can serve as a link with and between individual stakeholders and the wider aspects of the motivations for social accounting. It is in this context that the paper examines relations between the Social Doctrines of the Catholic Church (focusing on Social Encyclicals, in particular, ‘Centesimus Annus’) and business ethics and social accounting.