Corporate Social Responsibility And Accounting

Corporate social responsibility sets the limits of the responsibilities that enterprises must fulfill in their ethical, legal, economic and voluntary projects and businesses. The concept of corporate social responsibility, which emerged in the UK in the 19th century, aims to bring surplus values to society while making profit from businesses. Social problems increased rapidly with World War I, especially starting with the industrial revolution, during which children and women joined labor force under very bad conditions. Only local and state governments alone could not deal with this situation.

At this point, it became mandatory for the businesses to take on responsibility. The falling productivity of the employees and the reflection of the problems experienced in society on their working lives also accelerated this process. Corporate social responsibility, which has been frequently examined since the last quarter of the 20th century, constitutes an important place both in academic studies and in the business world.

When the definition of accounting is examined; "by summarizing, classifying and meaningfully summarizing information about transactions that occur in the assets and resources of the business due to operating and non-operating events, all or part of which have financial character, it is the science that interprets the results and thus provides useful information to business stakeholders and objectives" (Suren, 2013: 9). In the light of this definition, the accounting department in enterprises has an intense relationship with the concept of corporate social responsibility in terms of basic principles and rules such as informing the community, accountability when necessary, transparency in transactions and being reliable.

In enterprises, the accounting department should report not only against a particular person, group or institution, but with a complete, timely, truthful, impartial and honest approach to the interests of all stakeholders. In this way, it contributes to the economic, legal, moral and voluntary responsibilities of the enterprise, and thus to all steps under the heading of social responsibility. In this context, accounting units in enterprises should prioritize the interests of the community in all their operations, especially the 4 topics mentioned above (community information, accountability when necessary, transparency in transactions and trustworthy) and should prefer the benefits of the business. Accounting plays a key role in reporting and presenting transactions. It is possible to express the relationship between corporate social responsibility and social responsibility. (Dastan, Bellikli, 2015).

Recep TURAN / Human Resources Consultant