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Social Responsibility


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Contact:
Fay Spano
414-298-8789 x7263
fspano@asq.org

March 8, 2006
For Immediate Release

ASQ Questions & Answers on Social Responsibility

What is Social Responsibility?

  • The American Society for Quality defines ”social responsibility” as people and organizations behaving and conducting business ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues. Striving for social responsibility helps individuals, organizations and governments have a positive impact on development, business, and society.

Why is Social Responsibility important?

  • Smart business decisions are not just a matter of counting short-term dollars and cents. Wise decision makers look at the future impact of today’s choices – on people, on the community, and on the opinions of customers. While business results, investment, free enterprise, and other traditional economic forces continue to drive U.S. industry, organizations’ reputations and their ability to compete effectively around the world depend on integrating social responsibility efforts into business leader decision making and enterprise performance.

What is ASQ’s role?

  • The American Society for Quality was selected by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the official U. S. member to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to create and administer the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Social Responsibility. The U.S. TAG will help develop an international social responsibility standard.
  • ASQ’s role is to assemble a group of experts from a variety of organizations from the public and private sectors to represent a balanced cross section of stakeholders in developing this new standard. ASQ is now building the U.S. TAG from six interest categories:
    • Consumer
    • Industry
    • Government
    • Non-governmental organizations
    • Labor
    • Services, support, research and others
  • ASQ has extensive experience developing standards and currently administers four other TAGs within the following specialties:
    • Quality management
    • Environmental management
    • Dependability
    • Statistics

What will this standard accomplish?

  • The International Standard is expected to:
    • Assist organizations in addressing their social responsibilities while respecting cultural, societal, environmental, and legal differences and economic development conditions;
    • Provide practical guidance related to making social responsibility operational, identifying and engaging with stakeholders, and enhancing credibility of reports and claims made about social responsibility;
    • Emphasize performance results and improvement;
    • Increase confidence and satisfaction in organizations among their customers and other stakeholders;
    • Be consistent with existing documents, international treaties and conventions, and existing ISO standards;
    • Promote common terminology in the social responsibility field; and
    • Broaden awareness of social responsibility.
  • This standard is not intended to reduce government’s authority to address the social responsibility of organizations.
  • The standard will enter a “working draft” phase in March 2006.

When will the standard be completed?

  • The target publication date of the standard is 2010.

How can organizations get involved?

  • Organizations of any size may participate by joining the U.S. TAG. Members will attend a limited number of meetings throughout the year, review proposals and working documents, and respond to voting requests via e-mail.