ANALYSIS OF ALIGNMENT AMONG SOCIAL BALANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORT OF THREE LARGER BANKS IN ACTIVITY FROM BRAZIL

Abstract

The social balance and sustainability report have been created because the companies need to turn public account to society, with relationship to form as human and natural resources are used. In this sense, the social balance is an accounting report that publishes social information, however, in an isolated way this report doesn't generate possibility to analyze or same to compare actions accomplished by companies with results published in other reports, as for example, the sustainability report. Starting from the exposed, this study has as objective to observe if exists alignment among elements quantified in the social balance and elements described in sustainability reports of Brazilian banks. The study is exploratory and descriptive, and it accomplishes the content analysis of sustainability reports and social balance, in period of 2007 to 2008, of the three larger active banks inBrazil. As result, was evidenced in a partial way the alignment among the two reports. It was observed that the social balance of the studied companies are not the main focus, losing space for the sustainability reports, guided by guidelines pointed by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). This practice brings difficulty to the information users, in relation to the investments proportionalities establishment among companies of same area, caused by the largest volume of descriptive and qualitative information, and smaller of quantified information.