Monetarizing the social value: theory and evidence

Abstract

Over the last decade important efforts were made to integrate economic and social value in organizations within a unic report. This is significant because it reflects greater interest and demands in society concerning not just economic but social responsibilities of organizations.
However, social organizations are finding problems to give value to their social contribution, mainly due to the prominence of financial economic indicators; which curiously only have instrumental value in this type of entities.
The aim of this paper is to develop a social accounting model that allows incorporating the social value, in its monetized form, employing accounting standards; with the economic one. It is not possible to monetize full social value with this model, although it does show economic value with social impact, socio-economic return and specific social value.
Application of this model makes possible the quantitative and monetized comparison of integrated value between companies, which would involve more efficient decision-making based on symmetry and more complete information (private organizations), more efficiency in consumption or investment decisions (private individuals) and efficient indicators for establishing public policies (public administration). Overall, it could prove to be a basic and valuable component of business reputation.