The corporate responsibility report between private interest and collective welfare Social reporting for social enterprises – the experience of social cooperatives in Lombardy, Italy

Abstract

Social reporting is the principal instrument for no profit organizations to develop accountability towards stakeholders. Social reporting actually doesn't inform social responsibility orientation of this kind of organizations, that is at the base of their missions, but favors the growth of consensus and trust of stakeholders about their activity and management and it's fundamental to pursue efficiency and effectiveness. The role of social reporting is not the same for all kind of no profit organizations. Actually different organizations adopts social reporting for different aims and it's depends on management characteristics and field of work of the organizations. However there isn't, in business community and in the academy debate, a shared view about contents and aims of social reporting in no profit organizations.

It's growing the attention about social reporting in Italian no profit organizations but at present there isn't information about the extension of the phenomenon. In particular it's unknown the number of no profit organizations that have annual social reporting and there are few empirical research that describe how is the approach of no profit organizations on social reporting.

The paper presents the results of a research about social reporting in social cooperatives of Regione Lombardia. The aim of the research is to analyse the state of the art of social reporting in this kind of organizations. There are 1314 social cooperatives in Lombardia (dived in 856 social cooperatives "A" and 458 social cooperative "B").

The research has been conducted with a questionnaire sent to all the social cooperatives of regional register in Lombardia. The questionnaire has been sent to 1314 social cooperatives with a redemption of 10%. The principal issues of the research are: level of diffusion of social reporting, why cooperatives doesn't adopt this kinds of documents, principal aims of social reporting and prospective benefits, stakeholders engagement, structure and principal contents of social reporting.