Thursday, September 15, 2005
The ISO and social responsibility: breakdown or breakthrough in Bangkok
In launching a process to develop a social responsibility standard, ISO has taken on one of the most challenging topics in its history. But has it got its ducks lined up? Paul Hohnen and Tom Rotherham weigh up prospects for the coming ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility
There is rising concern that the second meeting of the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility, to be held in Bangkok on 26-30 September, could be a “make or break” session.
The outcome will depend on how well two basic issues are handled: purpose (what do we want to do?), and participation (who needs to be around the table to do it?). It is clear that there are serious problems on both fronts. Unless the experts in Bangkok agree to focus on something achievable, there is little likelihood that things will get much easier. The resulting impact could be damaging – on the International Organisation for Standardisation and on the corporate social responsibility movement in general.
Purpose
On the issue of what a “social responsibility guidance standard” would do, most experts are still in defensive mode: there are many clear and forceful opinions on what it should not do, but there is no clear vision of what it should do. So we know that it will not be a management system standard; that it will not be open to certification; and that it will not conflict with existing standards.
And the what still appears to be confused with the why. When asked why ISO should be involved in social responsibility, most people refer not to the need for a particular international social responsibility standard, but rather to the value of ISO’s brand name and distribution channels. That is, not in terms of what ISO can create, but in terms of how it can market social responsibility to a mainstream audience.
So, more than a year after ISO decided to launch an social responsibility process, there is still no sense of drive or vision around what ISO should or could do. There is only a long laundry list of possible elements that raises as many questions as it answers.
This has important consequences for the levels of interest that experts and organisations from all backgrounds are (or, in most cases, are not) showing in the process. People do not get excited by not developing something; they get excited by a clear and positive vision, even if it is a modest one.
Participation
Any discussion about social responsibility invites diverse and often deeply felt viewpoints. An international, non-governmental process purporting to help define and respond to societal expectations needs to reflect and address these different perspectives. But it also has to find a way to ensure that the role of government is not undermined.
To its credit, ISO has stepped out of its normal structure for this social responsibility process. Normally, experts are organised only along national lines, e.g. experts are from Canada, Chile, Chad or China. Recognising that minority viewpoints tend to get lost in the development of a national consensus, ISO has created six stakeholder categories in which experts are grouped for the social responsibility process: industry, labour, consumers, non-governmental organisation, government, and “other”. Each country can send one expert for each of these six categories – which helps to ensure that minority views are not homogenized out of existence. International and regional organisations can also participate directly and fully through liaison affiliations.
On the surface, this trend away from expert-based towards representative-based standardisation is a positive development. The problem is, however, that complex problems are not solved by single actions. The complex problem is that ISO does not pay for the development of the products that it later sells. ISO is used to developing technical standards that have clear commercial implications. Companies will pay for something that they will benefit from.
The situation is starkly different for standards with no commercial applications that are of interest to non-commercial organisations. Many experts have been wondering where the progressive-minded multinational companies are hiding in the ISO process. Response: many are not there because they do not think that they will have much to learn (or fear) from this standard, i.e. no commercial interest means no justification for the costs, which means no participation.
The ISO social responsibility process is suffering from the classic tragedy of the commons – further complicated by the lack of a clear positive vision that excites proactive engagement. What we are left with is organisations struggling to convince their boards and donors that they should be involved – if for nothing else, for damage limitation. This further feeds the negative agenda in the ISO’s working group.
But does ISO really need to ensure that six experts from each stakeholder group from each of its 149 national members are involved in the process? Hopefully not. So, then, how much engagement is enough (and how much is too little)?
This depends to a large extent on the scope of the standard. It presently looks like stakeholder and developing country engagement levels will be lower than originally hoped. This must result in a reduction in the scope and ambition for the standard that is to be developed.
If Bangkok is to succeed we need a positive agenda; if the whole ISO social responsibility process is to succeed it also needs to be a modest one. The question is: where will this agenda come from? And then: what can be done to ensure that a minimum of participation is achieved?
Positive but modest agenda
Like it or not, the three-year-plus ISO social responsibility process is the biggest, most comprehensive and most inclusive social responsibility process that we have to work with at present – and, in all likelihood, that we will ever have to work with. Politicised though it is, the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility is also the only international initiative focused on the implementation of existing rules rather than creation of additional ones.
Further, ISO standards are the most widely respected and used non-governmental standards. There are more than half a million sites certified to ISO9000 worldwide, and a further 66,000 certified to ISO14001. But that is just certifications – estimates suggest that up to ten times as many sites are using these standards as guidance documents. ISO26000 will not be for certification – but literally hundreds of thousands of organisations will hear about it and trust it.
The danger is that we let the numbers and potential impacts go to our heads. ISO is a consensus-based process in which nothing can be done unless all countries and stakeholders are happy with it. There are also a large number of very sharp, very plugged in experts involved in the process. So anyone hoping to slip something by unnoticed or to force someone’s hand should find another forum.
Given that most experts have more concerns than hopes, that participation rates will not be as high as originally hoped, that consensus rules, and that any international standard will ultimately be a lowest-common-denominator – what is the way forward? What is a realistic, positive agenda for the ISO social responsibility standard?
If ISO’s strength is its mainstream potential, then ISO should develop a mainstream standard – something that helps the masses of uninitiated, uninformed organisations to understand what the acronym means for them. Crucially, it must be something that the big business lobby can support – even if the only reason is that it explicitly does not target them. Call it what you want, the ISO social responsibility standard will be used primarily by corporate entities: it must be developed with this in mind.
For their part, unions and NGOs have been cynical about the benefits of social responsibility, and continue to campaign for better implementation of existing laws and new regulations. Like it or not, however, there appears to be limited appetite among governments to oblige either side. There are as few signs of moves to respond to business calls for more carrots as signs to oblige NGO calls for more sticks.
But imperfect though social responsibility is, governments, consumers, labour, NGOs and progressive companies all share an interest in injecting social responsibility DNA into large laggard companies and into small and medium sized enterprises. And these are the people whom ISO should want around the table: groups that are ambitious in the number of organisations that they want to help, not in the amount of pressure that they want to apply. ISO is not the right forum for applying pressure.
As a broad guidance standard, the 26000 series could be a major factor in giving profile and meaning to social responsibility issues for all organisations. There will still be plenty of room for disagreements in the negotiation of the text, but at least we will have a common vision for what we want to create. ISO should create the Dummies’ Guide to social responsibility.
Breakthrough or bust?
If a breakthrough comes at Bangkok, it will not be in the form of an agreed social responsibility standard. That is probably still years away. It will come with the greater recognition that: a social responsibility standard can be an opportunity, not just a threat; ISO’s open, multi-stakeholder, expert-based process offers the best framework to produce such a result; and even as a “lowest common denominator” standard, the prospect of scaling up social responsibility not to hundreds but to hundreds of thousands of organisations is worth a bit of everyone’s time and energy.
Paul Hohnen is an independent consultant advising on sustainability issues; Tom Rotherham works for the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Both have been actively involved in the ISO Social Responsibility process for the past two and a half years and will be attending the upcoming Bangkok meeting.
Useful links:
www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage
www.iisd.org/pdf/2004/standards_csr_briefing_9.pdf
www.iso.org/iso/en/info/Conferences/SRConferencem
There is rising concern that the second meeting of the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility, to be held in Bangkok on 26-30 September, could be a “make or break” session.
The outcome will depend on how well two basic issues are handled: purpose (what do we want to do?), and participation (who needs to be around the table to do it?). It is clear that there are serious problems on both fronts. Unless the experts in Bangkok agree to focus on something achievable, there is little likelihood that things will get much easier. The resulting impact could be damaging – on the International Organisation for Standardisation and on the corporate social responsibility movement in general.
Purpose
On the issue of what a “social responsibility guidance standard” would do, most experts are still in defensive mode: there are many clear and forceful opinions on what it should not do, but there is no clear vision of what it should do. So we know that it will not be a management system standard; that it will not be open to certification; and that it will not conflict with existing standards.
And the what still appears to be confused with the why. When asked why ISO should be involved in social responsibility, most people refer not to the need for a particular international social responsibility standard, but rather to the value of ISO’s brand name and distribution channels. That is, not in terms of what ISO can create, but in terms of how it can market social responsibility to a mainstream audience.
So, more than a year after ISO decided to launch an social responsibility process, there is still no sense of drive or vision around what ISO should or could do. There is only a long laundry list of possible elements that raises as many questions as it answers.
This has important consequences for the levels of interest that experts and organisations from all backgrounds are (or, in most cases, are not) showing in the process. People do not get excited by not developing something; they get excited by a clear and positive vision, even if it is a modest one.
Participation
Any discussion about social responsibility invites diverse and often deeply felt viewpoints. An international, non-governmental process purporting to help define and respond to societal expectations needs to reflect and address these different perspectives. But it also has to find a way to ensure that the role of government is not undermined.
To its credit, ISO has stepped out of its normal structure for this social responsibility process. Normally, experts are organised only along national lines, e.g. experts are from Canada, Chile, Chad or China. Recognising that minority viewpoints tend to get lost in the development of a national consensus, ISO has created six stakeholder categories in which experts are grouped for the social responsibility process: industry, labour, consumers, non-governmental organisation, government, and “other”. Each country can send one expert for each of these six categories – which helps to ensure that minority views are not homogenized out of existence. International and regional organisations can also participate directly and fully through liaison affiliations.
On the surface, this trend away from expert-based towards representative-based standardisation is a positive development. The problem is, however, that complex problems are not solved by single actions. The complex problem is that ISO does not pay for the development of the products that it later sells. ISO is used to developing technical standards that have clear commercial implications. Companies will pay for something that they will benefit from.
The situation is starkly different for standards with no commercial applications that are of interest to non-commercial organisations. Many experts have been wondering where the progressive-minded multinational companies are hiding in the ISO process. Response: many are not there because they do not think that they will have much to learn (or fear) from this standard, i.e. no commercial interest means no justification for the costs, which means no participation.
The ISO social responsibility process is suffering from the classic tragedy of the commons – further complicated by the lack of a clear positive vision that excites proactive engagement. What we are left with is organisations struggling to convince their boards and donors that they should be involved – if for nothing else, for damage limitation. This further feeds the negative agenda in the ISO’s working group.
But does ISO really need to ensure that six experts from each stakeholder group from each of its 149 national members are involved in the process? Hopefully not. So, then, how much engagement is enough (and how much is too little)?
This depends to a large extent on the scope of the standard. It presently looks like stakeholder and developing country engagement levels will be lower than originally hoped. This must result in a reduction in the scope and ambition for the standard that is to be developed.
If Bangkok is to succeed we need a positive agenda; if the whole ISO social responsibility process is to succeed it also needs to be a modest one. The question is: where will this agenda come from? And then: what can be done to ensure that a minimum of participation is achieved?
Positive but modest agenda
Like it or not, the three-year-plus ISO social responsibility process is the biggest, most comprehensive and most inclusive social responsibility process that we have to work with at present – and, in all likelihood, that we will ever have to work with. Politicised though it is, the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility is also the only international initiative focused on the implementation of existing rules rather than creation of additional ones.
Further, ISO standards are the most widely respected and used non-governmental standards. There are more than half a million sites certified to ISO9000 worldwide, and a further 66,000 certified to ISO14001. But that is just certifications – estimates suggest that up to ten times as many sites are using these standards as guidance documents. ISO26000 will not be for certification – but literally hundreds of thousands of organisations will hear about it and trust it.
The danger is that we let the numbers and potential impacts go to our heads. ISO is a consensus-based process in which nothing can be done unless all countries and stakeholders are happy with it. There are also a large number of very sharp, very plugged in experts involved in the process. So anyone hoping to slip something by unnoticed or to force someone’s hand should find another forum.
Given that most experts have more concerns than hopes, that participation rates will not be as high as originally hoped, that consensus rules, and that any international standard will ultimately be a lowest-common-denominator – what is the way forward? What is a realistic, positive agenda for the ISO social responsibility standard?
If ISO’s strength is its mainstream potential, then ISO should develop a mainstream standard – something that helps the masses of uninitiated, uninformed organisations to understand what the acronym means for them. Crucially, it must be something that the big business lobby can support – even if the only reason is that it explicitly does not target them. Call it what you want, the ISO social responsibility standard will be used primarily by corporate entities: it must be developed with this in mind.
For their part, unions and NGOs have been cynical about the benefits of social responsibility, and continue to campaign for better implementation of existing laws and new regulations. Like it or not, however, there appears to be limited appetite among governments to oblige either side. There are as few signs of moves to respond to business calls for more carrots as signs to oblige NGO calls for more sticks.
But imperfect though social responsibility is, governments, consumers, labour, NGOs and progressive companies all share an interest in injecting social responsibility DNA into large laggard companies and into small and medium sized enterprises. And these are the people whom ISO should want around the table: groups that are ambitious in the number of organisations that they want to help, not in the amount of pressure that they want to apply. ISO is not the right forum for applying pressure.
As a broad guidance standard, the 26000 series could be a major factor in giving profile and meaning to social responsibility issues for all organisations. There will still be plenty of room for disagreements in the negotiation of the text, but at least we will have a common vision for what we want to create. ISO should create the Dummies’ Guide to social responsibility.
Breakthrough or bust?
If a breakthrough comes at Bangkok, it will not be in the form of an agreed social responsibility standard. That is probably still years away. It will come with the greater recognition that: a social responsibility standard can be an opportunity, not just a threat; ISO’s open, multi-stakeholder, expert-based process offers the best framework to produce such a result; and even as a “lowest common denominator” standard, the prospect of scaling up social responsibility not to hundreds but to hundreds of thousands of organisations is worth a bit of everyone’s time and energy.
Paul Hohnen is an independent consultant advising on sustainability issues; Tom Rotherham works for the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). Both have been actively involved in the ISO Social Responsibility process for the past two and a half years and will be attending the upcoming Bangkok meeting.
Useful links:
www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage
www.iisd.org/pdf/2004/standards_csr_briefing_9.pdf
www.iso.org/iso/en/info/Conferences/SRConferencem
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