Exploring Voluntary Disclosure: a Social Reporting Perspective

Purpose - Professional associations, public institutions and groups of companies have developed standards for the diffusion of information that are different from the traditional forms of communication. Among the mentioned representation models a very important role is assumed by the Social-Balance-Sheet. Companies that draw up a SBS may use different international standards and guidelines, because there aren't defined regulations. In this direction, the purpose of this paper is to define the role of social balance sheet for contemporary companies in the knowledge economy, by providing an updated conceptualization of international standards and guidelines used to apply the voluntary disclosure. Design/methodology/approach - The method used for the research is qualitative (Hair et al., 2003), with a view to proposing to the scientific community and also to operators of the field, an updated conceptualization of the social balance sheet models. By facing the characteristics of the existing sourcing methods of international standards and guidelines, another contribution of the research is in defining some proposal to modify social reporting. Data sourcing has been carried out through secondary sources originated from an analysis of documents, reports, news, journal articles in open sources, websites, databases and scientific documents. Originality/value - The paper defines the current framework of social reporting in the knowledge economy among which the Social Balance Sheet, drafted in accordance to self-financing model, has the assumption that the self-financing is a good indicator of the social potential of a company better than other indicators such as employment, taxes, etc. Practical implications - The outcomes of the research allow to stakeholders to have a qualitative and quantitative disclosures about company's sociability. The companies that invest in social reporting could have major performance and can create value in the long period.