A new standard on corporate social responsibility, ISO-26000, is currently being developed.
ISO-26000 is designed as a guide to help businesses understand where their responsibilities to various stakeholders begin and end. The standard, long in demand by Western businesses, will provide a company with a system to ensure it is properly monitoring its social responsibility performance and that it has in place the relevant mechanisms to achieve its goals in this realm. Following the standard will not necessarily mean that a company is acting in a socially responsible manner, but it will make it easier to achieve these goals and for management and observers to know if the company is, or is not, meeting its social responsibility objectives.
Here is a story about what the private sector really thinks about the CSR movement and this standard.
As John Sullivan and I argue in our recent paper on business ethics, while dealing with all these issues of ethics and corporate social responsibility, governments, businesses, and NGOs must “ensure that the reputational and collateral risks assumed by corporations do not inhibit the further development of the emerging markets.”
Also, I, personally, prefer the term corporate citizenship. This stems from my belief that corporations are part of society and thus have not only responsibilities (as the CSR concept suggests) but also rights. Citizenship implies a two way course of action and an active business participation in any reform process, not just mandates by governments and NGOs and subsequent passive responses by the private sector.
Published Date: April 07, 2006