Social accounting in organizations of the social economy: The ARTE program applied to the CLADE Group

Abstract

There is a growing concern in corporations (and specifically inside social economy organizations) in order to align the interests of stakeholders and society at large with the traditional interest of corporations, focused on profits. Business schools have difficulties in adapting their curricula and pedagogical tools to help current and new generations of managers to strategically implement that alignment of interests. In this paper we propose an executive management education program (Action Research Training Experience-ARTE) as a practical tool to tackle this problem of alignment. ARTE incorporates two kinds of innovations. On one hand, the object of ARTE is to design and implement a social accounting method able to inform participating organizations about their results in financial, social and sustainability issues. On the other hand, ARTE is implemented through a non-traditional methodology: critical action learning. In the paper we analyze the theoretical framework of ARTE and we develop its practical application to seven subsidiaries of a large industrial group belonging to the social economy. The article shows the feasibility of introducing a social accounting method in a corporation belonging to the social economy able to produce information valid to understand and align the value that each organization produces with stakeholders' interests and the wellbeing of the community where the corporation operates.