Social accountability and its auditing

This paper contains an analytical review of most of the approaches to social accounting/auditing. The following approaches are briefly described and their usefulness is critically appraised: (i) The perceived reality approach. (ii) The cost or outlay approach. (iii) The benefit-cost approach. (iv) The programme-management approach. (v) The inventory approach—social process auditing. (vi) The state-interference approach. (vii) The social-goal-programming approach.