In essence, the history that lies behind
this work is as follows. The 1970s saw a
fairly widespread interest in issues of
corporate social responsibility and the
first substantive experiments with social
accounting and auditing. Social accounting
made it as far as a legal requirement
in France, (the bilan social), had tangible
influence on corporate disclosure
requirements in the UK and was seriously
as a potential addition to company
law in the UK in the late 1970s. Although
pockets within the accounting
profession were enthusiastic supporters
of social accounting, it never made it
into the orthodoxy of either the profession
or of business practice. There are
some obvious, though largely un-stated,
reasons for the non-adoption of social
accounting (for example, it threatened
capital with costs and with accountability).