Social auditors: illegitimate offspring of the audit family? Finding legitimacy through a hybrid approach.

This paper explores novel developments in social auditing in Australia and considers what the futurity might hold for this emerging area of practice. The authors throw back on their own social audit experience with sum of two units organisations that are using social auditing to improve their corporate social responsibility performance. They consider inherent tensions of working with a 'hybrid' approach to social auditing that combines a subjective/narrative evidence base with the ne for objective verifiable data. The aim of the article is to unclose up discussion about the legitimate place of