[afro-nets] Corporate social responsibility

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

ISO's Social Responsibility guidelines
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http://www.ishn.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,2162,159010,00.html


A small step forward - maybe

By Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH

Corporate social responsibility has become a huge cottage indus-
try - especially in Europe - with scores of corporations adopt-
ing "corporate codes of conduct" and establishing "CSR compli-
ance" departments. Other companies outsource "social audits" of
their own and contractors' factories to "third-party" auditors
including giant transnational accounting firms. CSR is the sub-
ject of several dozen annual conferences worldwide, and there is
a not-so-small library of monthly magazines, annual corporate
CSR reports, academic and how-to books, and a score of web sites
on the subject.

ISO jumps in

In June 2004, the International Standards Organization (ISO)
jumped into the CSR arena, initiating a multi-year process to
set consensus guidelines on "social responsibility" for corpora-
tions and other organizations. In March 2005, work formally be-
gan to create ISO 26000, to be published in 2008, under the
leadership of a "twinned" secretariat of Brazilian and Swedish
organizations, one each from the developing and developed
worlds. More than 225 "CSR experts" from 43 ISO member countries
(including 21 developing countries) and 24 liaison organizations
attended the March meeting in Brazil. This send-off virtually
guarantees that ISO 26000 will be developed, despite opposition
from some ISO members. ISO's avowed objective: "Provide practi-
cal guidance related to operationalizing social responsibility,
identifying and engaging with stakeholders, and enhancing credi-
bility of reports and claims made about social responsibility."

Will it matter?

The question is whether ISO's voluntary guidelines - 26000 is
explicitly not a certification standard - will have any real so-
cial impact. The world is already awash in competing codes of
conduct, auditing protocols, non-profit and for-profit auditors,
and multiple certification schemes. Will 26000 make any differ-
ence on the factory floors of the global economy where brutal,
sweatshop conditions exist in all countries, including the
United States? Very little tangible progress has been made in
the past decade "operationalizing" corporate social responsibil-
ity beyond glossy annual reports. This is true even in the
sports shoe and garment industries where some companies have
been dragged, kicking and screaming all the way, to the fore-
front of the CSR world by publicity scandals and relentless con-
sumer pressure. What has been accomplished is a higher level of
disclosure. Nike Inc., for instance, has publicly released the
names of its 500-plus supplier factories. Now specific plants'
actual conditions can be evaluated. Gap, Inc. also has released
candid reports detailing the continuing violations of workers'
rights and workplace safety in its global supply chain, despite
its best efforts to the contrary. But scores of companies in
just the shoe and garment industries - let alone in the world
economy - have made only the most nominal efforts at corporate
social responsibility. Wal-Mart, the poster child of global
sweatshop production, is emblematic of Fortune 500 companies
with secret, in-house auditing of its code of conduct that in-
variably finds "substantial compliance," followed by declara-
tions of being socially responsible. The inescapable conclusion
is that the dominant variety of CSR is little more than an
elaborate public relations exercise.

Barriers to real responsibility

The obstacle to making any significant, broad-based progress in
improving factory health and safety conditions, not to mention
wages, hours, harassment and discrimination in the global econ-
omy, is not a lack of guidelines, or management CSR command-and-
control systems, or certification schemes. The real obstacles
are: Lack of political will by corporations to refrain from tak-
ing advantage of vulnerable countries and desperate workers
whose super-exploitation fattens the bottom line and meets fi-
nancial analysts' "quarterly expectations." Lack of political
will, and perhaps lack of genuine options, on the part of gov-
ernments in the developing world (heavily in debt, totally de-
pendent on foreign investment, and straight-jacketed by interna-
tional financial institutions) to enforce existing regulations
and establish new ones. Proposed ISO guidelines will not over-
come matters of will and resources. It is encouraging that ISO
has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International
Labor Organization (ILO) to incorporate the ILO's conventions
and declarations into the ISO 26000 Social Responsibility Guide-
lines. But even if the ISO guidelines resist the temptation (and
substantial corporate pressure) to establish only the "lowest
common denominator" of standards, the question of actual imple-
mentation on the factory floor remains. No corporation, of
course, will be required to adopt or implement the guidelines.

Essential guideline components

If the ISO guidelines are to have any relevancy at all, two ele-
ments are essential: transparency and worker participation. The
guidelines must require public reporting of any CSR system's au-
diting procedures, results and corrective actions, and they must
identify the specific enterprises and activities evaluated by
the guidelines. Second, there must be a feasible, effective
means for workers in the audited enterprises, or their represen-
tatives in non-governmental organizations, to contest errors or
misrepresentations in CSR audits and reports. Without these
minimum components, the ISO 26000 Guidelines will not address,
let alone remedy, the real obstacles to implementing meaningful
CSR regimes on the factory floor. Much larger efforts are needed
to generate and sustain the political will and material re-
sources that governments, employers and workers need to actually
protect workplace health and safety in a global economy where
there is a mad "race to the bottom" in all areas but short-term
financial results.

--
From: "Rebecca Cohen" <rcohen18@jhu.edu>
  "Spirit of 1848"