(Online Course) Public Administration for IAS Mains Exams
Topic: Accountability and control: Social Audit
Social auditing is a process that enables an organisation to assess and demonstrate its social, economic, and environmental benefits and limitations. It is a way of measuring the extent to which an organisation lives up to the shared values and objectives it has committed itself to.
Social auditing information is collected through research methods that include social book-keeping, surveys and case studies. The objectives of the organisation are the starting point from which indicators of impact are determined, stakeholders identified and research tools designed in detail.
In the 70s, when. it first appeared, social audit was a response to the budding consumer movements that rode on the issues of unsafe products and to the environmentalists’ movements that protested on the wanton dumping of pollutants to the environment. And in the last decade when it resurfaced from the lull in the 80’s social audit was driven, and literally forced upon, by the ‘green business’ and ‘ethical investments’ communities that came to prominence through highly publicised boycotts of firms. Social audit in origin, it can be said then, has roots in the dire need to make business organisations more accountable to people and communities. That some business organisations’ decisions and actions have far-reaching implications on, and consequences to, communities and lives of peoples have to be recognised, and that whatever their impact - either beneficial or non-beneficial - these organisations have to account for them on the ground of social responsibility. Social Audit is thus, a method of ensuring accountability of any authority, governmental or otherwise, of its actions and inactions, what it chose to do, the manner in which it is being done and the analysis of what is done.