3. Fair Trade Intermediaries and Social Accounting: The Case of Assisi Organics

The Accounting and Accountability Practices of Fairtrade International (FLO)

“…Traidcraft and Cafédirect) in assessing the social accounting projects of social enterprises. This research revealed key challenges in implementing social and accounting tools (Dey, 2007;Reed et al, 2013) and a probable spectrum of new legitimacy logic that Fair Trade organisations and other social enterprises utilise to report the output and impact of their business (Nicholls, 2009). Though researchers in other disciplines are increasingly showing interest in the accountability notion within Fair Trade (Davenport & Low, 2013;Ullrich, 2007Ullrich, , 2011).…”

“…For example, Nicholls (2009) explored the emergent reporting practices of five social enterprises, including Café Direct, a Fair Trade organisation, to demonstrate how social entrepreneurs are attempting to create new legitimacies and logic of action by capturing the holistic complexity of organisational outputs and impacts with a range of social impact reporting options. More recently, in exploring social accounting practices from the early 1970s till the present, Reed et al (2013) classified full impact reporting practices of Fair Trade organisations into monetized and non-monetized statements, tracing how the increase in disclosures and reporting are linked to an organisation's social impact objectives.…”

“…For example, there remains a persistent concern that effective implementations of the Fair Trade social mission is challenging (Dey, 2007;Huybrechts & Nicholls, 2013;Jaffee & Howard, 2010). Accordingly, there are evidence that beneficiaries of Fair Trade are not getting equal access to the wider benefits (Cramer, Johnston, Oya, & Sender, 2014;Lyon, 2010;Reed et al, 2013;Sutton, 2013). In response to such concerns, however, there are no substantive disclosures explaining the activities of the umbrella organisations, nor disclosures on challenges that members in this field are facing in operationalizing the mission (negative case analysis) were found.…”