تاثیر ایزو 9000 و ایزو 14000 بر استانداردسازی مسئولیت اجتماعی؛ چشم انداز داخلی

Following a growing interest in corporate social responsibility, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced plans for development of the ISO 26000—guidance standard for social responsibility. Despite initial signals that ISO 26000 will be built on the intellectual and practical infrastructure of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000, the Advisory Group on Social Responsibility set a different direction: a guidance standard and not a specification standard against which conformity can be assessed. This paper aims to investigate what views ISO member body delegations and invited participants in international standardisation of social responsibility had about the divergence from the meta-standard approach towards a guidance standard. To answer the research question, the discussions at the ISO International Conference on Social Responsibility, where ISO member body delegations and approximately 40 invited organisations commented on this matter, have been analysed. As a result of this understanding, not only will insight into the first steps of standardisation of social responsibility be provided, but it will also shed light on the perception of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 that are held by standard developers.

In the past, companies were facing growing demands from customers, who hugely impacted on the way they operated, whereas today's demands have shifted toward addressing a wider spectrum of stakeholders (Rosam and Peddle, 2004). This evolution of business and societal environment is bringing quality management closer with other fields, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance and business ethics. Many scholars have started to point towards this evolutionary trend and some of them argue that for quality to remain “a viable concept in the 21st century, it must embed more deeply and firmly the issues of virtue” (Ahmed and Machold, 2004). As CSR is gaining its momentum, other scholars point to obvious parallels in quality and CSR evolution (Peddle and Rosam, 2004; Waddock and Bodwell, 2004; Castka et al., 2004a and Castka et al., 2004b) as well as assert the convergence of these two fields of study. Indeed, this convergence is happening at many levels—one of which is the arena of international standardisation. In the 1980s, following on from British Standard BS 5750, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed ISO 9000—a generic quality management systems standard (MSS), which became accepted globally. Followed by the ISO 14000 environmental management system in 1996, a similar scenario has been happening with the social responsibility field. In 2004, ISO announced a new work item: ISO 26000-guidance standard for social responsibility to be introduced by 2008. The pre-standardisation preparatory work suggested that the impact of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 on the standardisation of social responsibility is likely to be substantial. ISO/Bulletin (2002) informed that ISO standard for social responsibility would evolve from quality and environmental standards (ISO 9000 and ISO 14000). Specifically, the ISO Committee on Consumer Policy (ISO COPOLCO, 2002) recommended a meta-standard approach to the social responsibility standard against which firms could self-declare compliance or could seek certificates from authorised third parties. However, the Advisory Group on Social Responsibility, which was established as a result of Resolution 78/2002 and given the purpose of determining whether ISO should proceed with the development of ISO deliverables in the field of corporate social responsibility, recommended that “a guidance document, and therefore not a specification document against which conformity can be assessed” should be developed (ISO/AG/SR, 2004a and ISO/AG/SR, 2004b). As the next step in this pre-standardisation work, ISO held the ISO International Conference on Social Responsibility and invited ISO member body delegations and other international organisations to debate recommendations made by the Advisory Group on Social Responsibility. We conducted our research at this stage of the process of the social responsibility standardisation, i.e. before the process of the development of ISO 26000 started. Our aim was to investigate the question “what impact has ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 had on the direction of the development of ISO 26000 guidance standard for social responsibility?” In particular, we aimed to investigate what views ISO member body delegations and invited participants had on the proposal to move from the meta-standard approach towards a guidance standard. To answer our research question, we analysed the discussions at the ISO International Conference on Social Responsibility, where ISO member body delegations and approximately 40 invited organisations commented on this matter. The paper has the following structure. Firstly, we look at ISO MSS and discuss the situation in this area. Secondly, we shift the focus towards social responsibility standardisation and present recent developments within the ISO related to social responsibility standardisation. Thirdly, we describe in detail our research engagement. Fourthly, the results are presented, analysed and concluded with a discussion of social responsibility standardisation, limitations of our research and implication for future developments in the arena of social responsibility standardisation.

ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 significantly influenced the first steps in standardisation of social responsibility. Indeed, the global diffusion of both of these standards and its meta-standard approach to standardisation of ‘management practice’ gave the initiators of social responsibility standardisation an approach to grasp the social responsibility agenda (ISO/Bulletin, 2002). This is true not only for national standards such as DR03028 (2003) and SII10000 (2001), but also for standards such as SA8000 (2001) and AA1000 (1999). SA8000 was designed as an auditable standard for a third-party verification system and AA1000 is an accountability standard, focused on securing the quality of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting. Both of these are built around notions of policies, audits, management reviews and continuous improvement, which are typical elements of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. ISO 26000 avoided third-party certification, yet this can cause problems and raise further questions. Research shows that guidance documents are often widely unknown and their purpose is unclear (Boys et al., 2004). The risk here is that a guidance document, without a clear purpose and questionable credibility, can hamper the adoption and diffusion process of ISO 26000. Indeed, third-party certification can provide at least some level of confidence even if it is perceived as having eroded credibility. Hence ISO 26000 will have to find other ways to insure that the standard is not misused. One of the ways would be to use the approach of UN Global Compact and require companies to disclose information about the ways it supports ISO 26000 and its principles. Other approaches can encompass different certification schemes tailored to the type of claims that the organisation makes. Developments in these areas are necessary for ISO 26000 to add value to the uptake of the social responsibility agenda.