Understanding variation of social accounting and accountability: A comparative case within social enterprise

Abstract

Social enterprises are a burgeoning sector which can make a contribution to the country's socio economic well-being. Numerous social organisations actively promote social values in society and address social accounting issues. Despite having a substantial impact on society, their path to measure and expand their implications is highly problematic and setbacks. This study explores how the implementation of accounting value and implementation of social accounting, particularly in reporting practices within the social enterprise. Within qualitative case study comparatively, we investigated through interviews and triangulated with documentation issues related to expectations and integration of social accounting. Three social enterprises were chosen as a case organisation and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings of our study suggested that the social enterprise tends to implement social accounting in practice. Interestingly accounting value includes reliability, comparability and transparency were less implemented in their daily activities. Also, they lacked accounting experience and practitioner within their sector. The main contribution of this study is to suggest an improvement of the governance role of social accounting as the growth of the sectors become prominent.