About the ISO 26000 standard

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Written by Administrator

Thursday, 25 September 2008 10:38

According to the new work item proposal the standard should:

assist organizations in addressing their social responsibilities while respecting cultural, societal, environmental and legal differences and economic development conditions;
provide practical guidance related to operationalizing social responsibility, identifying and engaging with stakeholders, and enhancing credibility of reports and claims made about social responsibility;
emphasise performance results and improvement;
increase confidence and satisfaction in organizations among their customers and other stakeholders;
be consistent with and not in conflict with existing documents, international treaties and conventions and existing ISO standards;
not be intended to reduce government's authority to address the social responsibility of organizations;
promote common terminology in the social responsibility field; and
broaden awareness of social responsibility.

Organisation of Working Group

The experts of the working group are appointed by the ISO members and will include experts representing 6 main stakeholder categories. In addition, interested international and broadly based regional organizations are also able to appoint a maximum of two experts each. The 6 stakeholder categories are:

Industry;
Government;
Consumer;
Labour;
Non Governmental Organizations; and
Service, support, research and others.

In accordance with the normal ISO working methods, the working group will develop a draft standard that represents a consensus of the views of the experts participating in the working group. At the same time, it is expected that the member bodies, which nominate experts, will also establish national mirror committees and that these mirror committees will establish national positions on the successive drafts developed by the working group.

The ultimate aim is that the consensus reached in the working group is validated through the member body votes on the Draft International Standard (DIS). Therefore, while the participants in the working group will contribute as individual experts, and will not be expected to represent the national consensus position, they will nevertheless need to bear in mind national positions on issues that emerge in the working group.

Broad stakeholder engagement

To facilitate the participation of experts from stakeholder categories with limited resources, such as developing countries, non-governmental organizations, consumers and others, a specific task group (TG 1) has been created within the working group to deal specifically with stakeholder

Open communication

In order to ensure transparency and openness and to facilitate the provision of WG information, a strategic communication Task Group (TG 2) has been established. The Task Group should also develop supporting tools for disseminating information, such as: FAQ, Introduction to ISO and SR, Implementation Documents (for SMEs, developing countries, and introduction of the "best practices"), Provision of presentation materials and leaflets and brochures.

Trustworthy procedures

The operation of the working group is guided by the ISO Directives, and supplemented with special guidelines established by the ISO/TMB. A specific Task Group (TG 3) has also been established internal guidance on those special working procedures established by ISO/TMB for the working group. In addition, the Working Group has chosen to establish a Chair's Advisory Group (CAG). The CAG does not take decisions for the Working group, but rather identifies issues, holds preliminary discussions on how to address them, and through the Chair, makes recommendations to the Working Group.

Other subgroups

Other sub groups that have been established are: three task groups for standard writing and a liaison task force to co-ordinate on issuses that may be adressed in more than one of the standard writing task groups, an editing committee and four different language task forces.

Organizational structure of the Working Group

The organizational structure was revised at the Bangkok meeting, September 2005.

Last Updated on Thursday, 23 April 2009 20:05