Social Reporting Practices in Italian Public Sector: an Exploratory Study

This paper should be seen in the broad research field that analyses the impact of ICTs on public accountability reports with the objective of understanding whether the institutional websites of public administrations are qualifying and privileged carriers for social reporting and which models they use to draw up their documents. Our analysis refers to the public entities of the Italian regional capital cities that provide the highest number of services for their local communities: municipalities and hospitals. Our research assumption is that, for larger-sized public entities, websites should be the main channel used to meet the accountability expectations of stakeholders, and therefore they are the place where the highest degree of sensitivity to reporting should be observed. The empirical analysis revealed that the approaches to social reporting differ significantly in terms of formal structure, content and communication strength. The analysis seems to suggest that the awareness of the importance of social reporting is still rather scarce, occasional and, in many cases, detached from the criteria set for public accountability processes.