IAS/IFRS and social responsibility: is there a connection?

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the degree of social responsibility arising from the statement of comprehensive income prepared according to IAS/IFRS, to demonstrate whether the values obtained from prospects and from the calculation of the indicators are sufficient to analyze the Company's performance from the perspective of social responsibility and sustainable value or not. The European Union launched a process of harmonization – in order to reduce the variability of accounting rules by issuing important Directives – then subsequently it moved to the standardization process, consisting in the adoption of a single set of accounting principles to be applied uniformly to all businesses. To achieve this last objective, the European Union adopted the IAS/IFRS developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The research is divided into two sections and the approach used is mainly theoretical and qualitative. In the first part, the financial statements to be prepared according to IAS 1 and IAS 7 and, in particular, the so called statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income for the period are analyzed by underling the function of the same and by presenting some financial performance indicators. Then, the research highlights that these values obtained are not useful to communicate the company's strategy in terms of social responsibility and sustainable value. In the second part the analyses exposes the concept of social balance as a means to interact with all the stakeholders of a firm and not only with the shareholders who are the main recipients of the financial statements prepared according to IAS/IFRS. According to the social responsibility view the IAS/IFRS financial statements should be accompanied by the social balance. Not considering the firm only as a system for the production of financial/economic value but also as economic social actor which operates in a social environment to which it belongs and with which it interacts, it becomes crucial to complete the set of financial statements stated from IAS 1 with a social balance as well as the same IAS 1 contemplates.