Essence of social audit in the process of adoption of business social responsibility

Abstract

Introduction. The essence and characteristics of social audit are identified. The necessity of its introduction with the aim of establishing socially responsible economic activity of businesses is determined. It has been clarified the founding members of this type of control and companies  which have been the fist ones to use it in their practice. A structural and logical schemes of the basic elements of social audit as a subspecies of the control system are proposed. Its subject, object, goal, objectives, functions are proved. On the basis of the analysis of theory of social auditing components it has been proposed its classification according to its main characteristics.

Purpose. The aim of the study is formation of theoretical and methodological tools of social audit to understand its nature, purpose and features of its use the practice of micro-level institutions.

Method (methodology). In order to obtain reliable results during the presentation of the material we have used general scientific and special methods of learning, including historical one - to study the causes of emergence, evolution of requirements and tasks of social audit; axiomatic method and method of abstraction - to explain the essence of the concept of "social audits"; method of specification – to clarify the rocess of classification; dialectic, logic, analogy methods - to build structural logic of social audit.

Results. On the basis of the study it has been determined the content of social audit. In the broad sense it is used as a monitoring of social relationship at different levels of socio-economic systems. In the narrow sense it is used as an assessment of business enterprises for compliance with the principles of social responsibility. On the basis of structural-logic scheme of basic elements of social audit it has been determined that the object of its implementation in the company is a set of socio-economic relations of the company with interested in its activities parties. Its objects are facts of economic activity that indicate a socially responsible or irresponsible behavior of the company. The main criterion for the classification of social audit should be considered a sign of its functional purpose (social audit of compliance, effectiveness, strategic social audit). This sign is specified by tasks of this type of control. Another criterion is the sign of its contents (ecological audit, audit of labor protection of the company, audit of staff, and audit of relations with interested parties). Among the functions that are performed by the social audit we can distinguish the following ones: informational, analytical, heuristic, predictive, ideological, statin, communicative and adjusting.