The Stakeholder Strategy

9Social Accounting—An Essential Management Tool

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In the successful firms, the magic is not in what they do, it is in what they are and what they stand for.

—J. Liedtka, M. Haskins, J. Rosenblum, and J. Weber, 1997

This chapter focuses on social accounting—the practice of systematically recording, presenting, and interpreting a company’s nonfinancial or “social” accounts. Social accounting provides a framework for companies to assess the effectiveness of their relationship-building efforts and also to improve the quality and resilience of those relationships.

In this chapter we provide an overview of current social accounting practices, their ...