Social Auditors: Illegitimate Offspring of the Audit Family

A Conceptual Framework for Investigating ‘Capture’ in Corporate Sustainability Reporting Assurance

“…SRA practice here corresponds to the 'social audit' (FEE, 2002). Boele and Kemp (2005) provide a rare articulation from an assurance practitioners' perspective of the tension between Q1 and 428…”

“…• mimetic and coercive pressures from other companies in the sector (Park and Brorson, 2005;Waddock, 2008;Wallage, 2000); • normative influences from the academic community, professional bodies and standard setters (Boele and Kemp, 2005;Morimoto et al, 2005;Swift and Dando, 2002;Waddock, 2008); • differences in how the assurance process is conceptualised as an internal or external function (Edgley et al, 2010;Jones and Solomon, 2010); • coercive, normative, and possibly mimetic pressures from the assurance provider (Maltby, 1995;Park and Brorson, 2005); and • mimetic and possibly coercive forces in play between the standard setting bodies themselves.…”

What does materiality mean to integrated reporting preparers? An empirical exploration

“…The idea that accounting is a "social construction" is well developed in accounting research that adopts a critical/interpretative stance (Hines, 1988;Beattie, 2014;Boele and Kemp, 2005;Eccles and Krzus, 2014;Eccles and Youmans, 2016). Starting from this idea, various accounting scholars have elucidated ontological and epistemological perspectives that might be adopted to interpret accounting reality (e.g.…”

What’s mine is mine; what’s yours is mine: private ownership of ICTs as a threat to transparency

“…While some support a formal auditing protocol (Morimoto et al 2005), and accounting professionals have proposed incorporating social auditing within their functions (Porter 2009;Savitz and Weber 2006), others have suggested that public auditors are not the proper professionals for the job (Henriques 2001;O'Dwyer 2001) and that social scientists should have an important role (Boele and Kemp 2005). Regardless of who performs an audit, when a system for accountability is enforced there is a tendency to massage the information provided in order to fit the process (Neyland 2007).…”

“…Intense public response to reported abuses can cause a company to take up socially responsible actions (DeTienne and Lewis 2005;Stephenson 2009). Instead of responding to an event that damages its reputation, a company may engage in a type of self-regulation by voluntarily setting up methodologies to have meaningful conversations with its stakeholders (Boele and Kemp 2005;Dubbink et al 2008;O'Riordan and Fairbrass 2008;Tencati et al 2004). Within a model of CSR process, O'Riordan and Fairbrass (2009) place shareholder dialogue in the center, and indicate that communication is central to implementation.…”