SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE ITALIAN CASE WITHIN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This paper tries to offer a map about the theme of social responsibility and social reporting. Although it is an explored field in accounting research, we want to focus our attention on the Italian case because this would be the first step for a broader research that tries to underline the significant differences between countries which means exploring different backgrounds and cultures. The purpose of this paper is: - Describing the concept of social responsibility regarding the Italian doctrine, in particular in the Public Administration field; - Analyzing the characteristics of the social reporting of a public administration which operates in the Italian context; - Underlining the assigned role to stakeholders within the social reporting under study. Historically the non economic relations have become more and more important so that the contents of reporting have evolved from "simple" social relations, to natural and immaterial ones. So the evolution of reporting could be seen from social report to natural reporting up to intangible reports. We will adopt a methodology of research which takes in consideration both theory and practice. In fact, on one hand we will consider all the Italian literature about the social responsibility topic, and on the other hand we will analyze a sample of social reporting which are used in the Italian reality.