The Evolution of Social Reporting: The 'Early Days'

The brief given me is to provide an overview of the 'early days' of social (and environmental) reporting whilst also reflecting on the intellectual contribution of Rob Gray towards the development of the field. One initial problem that presents itself here is that social disclosure within the medium of corporate annual reports is far from being a recent phenomenon, and can indeed be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Clearly, notwithstanding his advanced years, Rob was not around to witness, or influence, these early developments! However (and fortunately for the purposes of this paper), the issue of social disclosure did not achieve real prominence until the 1970s, largely as a consequence of the debate, then raging, concerning the role of the corporation in society at a time of rising social expectations and emerging environmental awareness. I will, therefore, take the 1970s as my starting point for the purposes of this analysis and trace developments, of necessity exceedingly sketchily, up to 1992 - the year of the inaugural CSEAR conference. It was arguably at this stage that social and environmental accounting practice and research began its march from an embryonic state to the fully fledged phenomenon we observe today. Of course, the role of CSEAR (with Rob as its driving force) has been absolutely central in bringing about such a development.