Accounting for downstream value chain: examining the accountability for social impact of digitalisation

Purpose - Two major issues exist in measuring social impact within the value chain: trade-offs between data accessibility and data qualitative characteristics and shared accountability for digital data. This study aims to investigate their interconnectedness to identify tensions between impact measurement and accountability conditions and examine how these tensions align with the qualitative characteristics of data. The main objective is to develop a framework for identifying these tensions downstream, which can offer valuable insights into the challenges hindering accurate social impact measurements. Design/methodology/approach - Participatory action research was conducted in an IT company to ensure grounding in practitioners’ experiences with social accounting. Since the use of primary data was prohibited, this paper gathered impact indicators from a variety of secondary sources, including document and literature reviews, interviews, focus groups and a survey. Through inductive analysis of this data, this paper uncovered tensions in the measurement of social impact, which were then further examined using the international financial reporting standards (IFRS) conceptual framework and the five conditions of accountability. Findings - Five categories of tensions were identified that hinder accurate measurement of the technologies’ social impacts. Using the IFRS conceptual framework and the five conditions of accountability, this paper show that these tensions relate to trade-offs between data qualitative characteristics and can lead to incomplete accountability of the company for its impact on the downstream value chain. Originality/value - The originality of this study lies in demonstrating how the challenges of measuring technologies’ social impact are linked to the conditions under which IT companies can be held accountable for their activities and those of their customers.