While Living Labs place an emphasis on the early stages of enterprise creation, social auditing comes later in the enterprise life cycle. It is an inclusive process for reviewing, updating and developing a governance system collaboratively. Pioneered in the 1980s by Freer Spreckley2, it was further developed with Cliff Southcombe throughout the 1990s as a methodology for social enterprises to improve both their internal governance and responsiveness to the local community. Social auditing has its own learning cycle that starts by exploring the values that underpin a system of governance, which then progresses to comparing internal and external stakeholder views of the outcomes achieved. The process requires a commitment to publishing social accounts that can be scrutinised by stakeholders. In a FairShares Lab, social auditing can examine whether the 'Five FairShares Values and Principles' are operationalised to the satisfaction of stakeholders, and also identify local values and principles that need to be monitored in that context.

All variants of the FairShares Rules (from v2.x onwards) include a clause committing members to social auditing once a member threshold has been reached. Clause 47(b)(iii) calls for an:

"audit of the internal democracy and decision-making of the [legal form], the wages, health and safety, skill sharing and educational opportunities of its members and employees, or other matters concerning the overall personal or job satisfaction of members and employees; an assessment of the [legal form]'s activities externally, including effects on people, the environment and other organisations."

Both Living Labs and social auditing are more likely to thrive when people are included in learning and reviewing the effectiveness of processes. The next three learning and development methods provide a skillset for effectively engaging people in group deliberations. Each technique enables people to feel heard and included in learning and decision-making processes. We start with action learning (and appreciative inquiry), then move onto Open Space and finishing with OPERA and World Cafe. All the techniques work with small, medium or large groups to promote cooperative learning and decision- making.