Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theory and applications in social business and accountability. Design/methodology/approach -The paper develops the theoretical arguments, shows the importance of non-accounting measures, explores available non-accounting measures and suggests BSC as an externally validated reporting tool. Findings -There is a need to expand the accounting base to non-financial measures; social business and social enterprises do not have externally validated performance reports and there is no benchmark data to compare performance. Research limitations/implications -This is a conceptual and theoretical study. It needs empirical validation. Practical implications -Using the suggested measurement and reporting will make public accountability transparent and expand the accountant's social role. It will motivate teaching of social business in accounting. Social implications -The study supports social business as a legitimate entity; corporations engaged in social business will be more publicly responsible; the study will encourage investment in social business; small entrepreneurs from the bottom of the society will have an opportunity to participate in the economy; and the poor will participate in the economy, will expand the economy and contribute to social and economic development. Originality/value -The paper includes guidelines for implementing the proposed BSC, performance measurements and reporting techniques.

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An organizational performance evaluation is one part of a largermanagement control process involving complex relationships between variablesat the social, the organizational, and the individual levels. Thephilosophy, criteria, and methods used in performance evaluation varygreatly between different social and organizational cultures. In this paper,we address the issue from the perspective of a specific religion,’ Islam,and the culture which it has created, Islamic culture (IC), and compare itwith a secular culture (SC). Improvement and effectiveness in secular organizations(SO) are driven by economic considerations: while Islamicorganizations (IO) are required to look beyond such considerations. Thesupremacy of economic considerations limits an SO’S vision to thme materialisticaspects which provide the domain for deriving individual, social,and organizational goals and, at some point, everything must add up todollars and cents. An SO also derives transitory goals from economic considerations,for its organizational process emphasizes utilitarian and objectiveprinciples which state that profit maximization (or optimization) ispossible and also provides the criteria by which to measure success. In anIO, utilitarian objectives are allayed by spiritual needs, where the ideal is“reasonable profit,” and where there are sanctions against excessive profits.By definition, an organization is a purposive human system with purposesand goals which organizes and ptocesses material and human resomesfor the generation of output. For an SO, output is determined bysocial and economic goods and services, and a system’s success is measuredby its output’s quality and cost efficiency. The system’s reward isthe profit earned. Most of its output and reward measures are necessarilyquantitative and extrinsic in natute. An individual is, like any other partof that system, a supportive element vis-his the production of goods andservices. Thus the individual is part of a process driven by economic andquantitative criteria of success, one which has no room for hisher ownmoral and ethical standards. In other words, religious standards play noformal role in the SO management process.

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