THE ROLE OF THE ACCOUNTANCY PROFESSIONAL BODIES IN DEVELOPING SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING

In March 2010, the European Commission renewed its strategy to promote Corporate Social Responsibility in order to ensure long term employee and consumer trust. Corporate Social Responsibility is considered more relevant in the context of the economic crisis because it can help to build (and rebuild) trust in business and to identify new forms of value creation based on addressing societal challenges, which may represent a way out of the crisis. A priority area is repesented by companies' transparency on environmental and social issues. This research aims to assess the involvement of the professional accountancy bodies in the development of social and environmental reporting. After a review of research studies on corporate social and environmental disclosure and the role of the accounting profession in this context, the research identifies the strategies, policies and actions taken by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and of the Federation of European Expert Accountants (FEE) based on content analysis of public documents issued by the two bodies. The cases were selected having the influence exerted by the two organisms on other professional bodies and their ability to trace the strategic lines of the accounting profession at the international and European level. The basis upon which the accounting profession was founded and continues to exist is public trust, which is the degree to which the public has confidence in the services provided by the accounting profession. Society is currently expressing high demands on the discipline of accounting and therefore the profession is under pressure to expand its horizons to better reflect these demands. The research revealed that both accounting bodies had an intense activity and initiated political actions in the corporate social and environmental reporting field including sustainability in their strategic objectives. The following areas of involvement have been identified: issuance of assurance, education and ethics standards (in the case of IFAC which is also regulator), educational and web materials, participation in working parties, cooperation with other organisations in the development of reporting and assurance standards, research projects to support decision making, encouraging member bodies to develop similar policies, public statements inviting responsible parties to act. Based on its conclusions the study identifies some research directions to be developed. Academic and professional curricula of Romanian accountants could be analysed in order to determine how they could be improved in order to respond better to these societal requirements.This study identifies the political actions of main profesional bodies (IFAC and FEE) that might influence the actions of other bodies and future profile of accountants.