Definition
Social auditing is a process for evaluating, reporting on, and improving an organization’s performance and behavior, and for measuring its effects on society. The social auditing can be used to produce a measure of the social responsibility of an organization. It takes into account any internal code of conduct as well as the views of all stakeholders and draws on best practice factors of total quality management and human resource development. Like internal auditing, social auditing requires an organization to identify what it is seeking to achieve, who the stakeholders are, and how it wants to measure performance. Social auditing provides an assessment of the impact of an organization’s nonfinancial objectives through systematically and regularly monitoring its performance and the views of its stakeholders. In the accounting terms, social auditing is defined as...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences and Readings
Adams, C. A., & Evans, R. (2004). Accountability, completeness, credibility and the audit expectations gap. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 14, 97–115.
Basalamah, A. S., & Jermias, J. (2005). Social and environmental reporting and auditing in Indonesia. Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business, 7, 109–127.
Bauer, R. A., & Fenn, D. H., Jr. (1973). What is a corporate social audit? Harvard Business Review, 51, 37–48.
Carroll, A. K. B. (2008). Business and society: Ethics and stakeholder management (7th ed.). Mason: South-Western College.
Courville, S. (2003). Social accountability audits: Challenging or defending democratic governance? Law & Policy, 25, 269–297.
Hay, R. D. (1975). Social auditing: An experimental approach. Academy of Management Journal, 18, 871–877.
Henriques, A. (2001). Civil society and social auditing. Business Ethics: A European Review, 10, 40–44.
Hess, D. (2001). Regulating corporate social performance: A new look at social accounting, auditing, and reporting. Business Ethics Quarterly, 11, 307–330.
Malcom Mcintosh, J. A. (2001). Perspectives on corporate citizenship. Sheffield: Greenleaf.
Morimoto, R., Ash, J., & Hope, C. (2005). Corporate social responsibility audit: From theory to practice. Journal of Business Ethics, 62, 315–325.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2007). Auditing for social change: A strategy for citizen engagement in public sector accountability. New York: United Nations.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this entry
Cite this entry
Zu, L. (2013). Social Auditing. In: Idowu, S.O., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Gupta, A.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_250
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_250
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28035-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28036-8
eBook Packages: Business and Economics