International Accounting and Reporting Issues: 2004 Review - Unctad

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19 Chapter I In particular, the CGE generally felt that issues such as workforce profile and turnover, employee remuneration (wages, pensions and other benefits), and health and safety are compulsory for a satisfying social report. On the other issues proposed, such as geographical spending, the supply chain and cases of non-compliance with regulations, opinions in the CGE varied. Although some CGE members saw value in each of them, in-depth work would be needed to ensure that the indicators used fall within the scope of the enterprise’s accountability and are an accurate reflection of performance rather than a set of data. The point was made that information on taxation would also be useful as one of indicators of social reporting. The CGE also recommended that ISAR give guidance not only on which indicators to use, but also on how to compute, report and benchmark them. IV. SPECIFIC ISSUES OF SOCIAL REPORTING BY SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZE ENTERPRISES Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) may benefit from producing social reports. Although the discussion on the boundaries of TNCs’ accountability has not yet reached a consensus, large enterprises are under increasing pressure to be aware and in control of the environmental and social performance of their supply chain. Being able to manage and report on its policies and performance can give a small enterprise a competitive advantage over other local enterprises. The CGE agreed, however, that producing social reports should have only marginal additional cost for SMEs, particularly those based in developing countries. The CGE suggested that the indicators chosen for transnational corporations should be adapted to the capacities of small enterprises, possibly through a limited set of selected indicators. The choice of these indicators could be based on the information that TNCs already require from their suppliers. An easy way of keeping costs of reporting down would be to require from SMEs only the information they already gather in the normal course of business. One member of the CGE noted that SMEs account for a large part of the global supply chain and that they can be seen as users of reports as well as report preparers. Certain social information can be of value to SMEs and inform their decision to enter a particular supply chain. The CGE suggested that the secretariat examine the type of information that would be useful for SMEs as report users. V. CONCLUSION The paper presents the results of UNCTAD’s review of major existing initiatives on social indicators and the main issues raised by informal consultations with a number of distinguished experts in the area of corporate responsibility and social reporting. The results of this work suggest that further deliberations would be useful to explore the issue of harmonization of social reporting with a view to improve the comparability of social reports without imposing an additional reporting burden on enterprises.
International Accounting and Reporting Issues: 2004 Review The report highlights points raised during consultations regarding the scope of social reporting and the users of such reports. In particular it raises the question of whether common needs of different stakeholder groups could be identified so that harmonized reports that would contain a limited number of indicators might be useful to all such stakeholders. It also outlines a number of issues that could be further discussed regarding the criteria that could be used to improve the comparability of social reporting. ISAR may wish to further explore these and other issues to assess the feasibility of eventually producing a short list of core social indicators based on existing initiatives. 20
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International Accounting and Reporting Issues: 2004 Review - Unctad

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