The Time for Kicking Tires is Over

I have to admit that I was reluctant at first to get involved in the process to develop an ISO Guidance Standard on Social Responsibility. It just seemed so unwieldy and destined to become the standard of lowest common denominator - where country representatives would water down the guidance to a point where it would become meaningless. However, I was hopeful especially by the approach taken by ISO to attempt to open the process to a wider and more inclusive audience. Instead of a bunch of technical standards experts sitting around a table and designing the standard, ISO has taken the unprecedented step of inviting multi-stakeholder groups to participate in the development process.

Normally, experts are organized in national delegations for international standards development, but for this standard ISO has created six stakeholder categories in which experts are grouped. These include experts from industry, labour, consumer, non-governmental organizations, government and 'other' - which helps ensure that the voices of these stakeholders will be heard throughout the process. Representatives from international organizations such as UN agencies (ILO, WHO and Global Compact) and others such as Consumers International, AccountAbility and GRI have been attending meetings and are able to participate directly as liaison affiliations.

Obviously with such a large and varied group there are problems of trust building but I think that the first two meetings have helped to build that trust to a point where people have moved beyond asking the question "Do we really need an international ISO standard for social responsibility?"or "Is ISO the right organization to develop the standard?" to other questions like "What could it look like?" and "How do we build it so that it's relevant to all stakeholders?". We kicked the tires at the Brazil meeting and we decided to buy some sort of transportation in Bangkok, now we have to decide if its going to be a car or a moped, what model and colour it's going to be, and how many options we're going to outfit it with (realizing that the more options we buy the more expensive it gets). Are consumers buying?