CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY INSTRUMENTS AND THE NEW ISO 26000: REDUNDANT OR COMPLEMENTARY?

The last ten years have seen particularly strong changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR), with the introduction of new instruments such as the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in 2000 and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in 1998. These instruments propose voluntary tools to address CSR. In November 2010, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released the new social responsibility guidance under ISO 26000. It is important to understand the contribution of ISO 26000 to already existing CSR instruments and the connections between them. This article discusses whether companies need ISO 26000 if they already implemented UNGC and GRI: is there redundancy or complementarity?