The term 'social auditing' does not have a comprehensive, uniform definition and is used in different ways. The way in which data is presented and social audits practised varies significantly between corporations, industries and jurisdictions. This makes it difficult to define the concept in a universal way.
However, it can be described as 'a means of formally measuring and recording the level of a company’s social and environmental performance, involving regular monitoring and the collection of data from interviews, documents and inspections within an organisation' (Rahim & Vicario, 2015, based on Björkman & Wong, 2013).
Social auditing facilitates a transparent control and monitoring mechanism, allowing stakeholders to evaluate a corporation's social performance against particular standards and expectations. In this way, social auditing serves as an instrument of accountability.
Rahim, M.M., Vicario, V. (2015). Social Audit: A Mess or Means in CSR Assessment?. In: Rahim, M., Idowu, S. (eds) Social Audit Regulation. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15838-9_1