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You are here: Home > Learning Materials > Accounting > Management Accounting > Social Accounting > AccountAbility: The Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability |
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Social AccountingAccountAbility: The Institute of Social and Ethical AccountabilityAccountAbility is an international, non profit making, professional institute dedicated to the promotion of social, ethical and overall organisational accountability; and is dedicated to promoting social and ethical accountability for sustainable development by:
Source: AccountAbility AccountAbility is ten years old now so it's not just a flash in the pan idea. More than that, one of its basic ideas is that it's not enough just to talk about accountability, companies have to do it. This means that AccountAbility looks at how companies take action on the basis of stakeholder engagement. They also expect companies to carry out innovations on the basis of stakeholder engagement. The framework is rather a clever diagram as it shows us that an organisation is primarily accountable to its shareholders: the major stakeholders in any company. More than that it shows just how management of the organisation is accountable. It is accountable in terms of innovation, performance and learning: companies are dynamic organisations and reporting systems are dynamic too. More than that accountability is expressed in terms of accounting, reporting and assurance: how management is to report to its shareholders. Finally, all of these aspects are embedded in the organisation: they are part of what the business does in the same way the products and employees, shareholders and customers are. In the form of a diagram, the AA1000 framework looks like this: 
Reproduced by kind permission of AccountAbility A good way for us to appreciate the ins and outs of the AA1000 Framework is to see how it is being used in reality. The following page has a few examples... |
