Social and environmental accountability in developing countries

This chapter reviews the social and environmental accountability of global business activities in developing countries. It explores the role of accounting in making social and environmental consequences visible. The chapter argues for a case of “surrogate accountability” as an alternative to the corporate driven form of accountability. It also argues that global corporate activities have created many benefits in the form of economic development of developing countries including employment generation and tax revenues for the state. The chapter explains the context of a number of developing countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria and Tanzania. The necessarily brief reflection on development-oriented corporate social responsibility (CSR) shows that corporate potential to undertake CSR activities to help development agenda of the developing countries needs to be considered with caution and scepticism. Incomplete reporting defeats the fundamental objectives of CSR reporting, namely, transparency and accountability.