Center for Corporate Auditing, Responsibility and Management policy Authoring/Social contract policy

Member States and the Commission are to encourage the drawing-up of codes of conduct; this is not to impair the voluntary nature of such codes and the possibility for interested parties of deciding freely whether to adhere to such codes.

—Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council

Social contract policy

Introduction

This policy is intended to promote corporate social responsibility efforts of companies as voluntary agreements between the companies and society and to document these agreements as process instructions within the companies. The policy does explicitly require ISO 9000 certification that covers the social contract as defined through this policy.

Corporate citizenship

1. The company must address issues of co-determination through citizens concerned and the general public.
2. The company should consider international agreements in its field(s) of activity and join or support international agreements where possible and desirable.
3. The company should further coopetition in its field(s) of activity.
4. The company must offer a definite set of voluntary services to society.
5. The company must have a designated public corporate social responsibility contact.
6. The company must accept the responsibility to further the implementation of basic rights.

Public sphere

1. Employees must be allowed to discuss all issues arising from the social contract in public without being penalized, which should not be construed to permit disclosure of company secrets, unless such disclosure seems sufficiently inevitable in order not to make this requirement void.

Strict preconditions

1. A failure to implement any of the following requirements should be seen as a complete failure to implement this policy.
2. The company must have a continuing education policy.
3. The company must have a co-determination policy.
4. The company must have a whistleblower policy.
5. The company must have an equal opportunity policy.
6. The company must implement the Supporting the state of rights policy.
7. The company must implement the Global Compact policy.
8. The company must implement the Agenda 21 policy.
9. The company must have a code of business ethics.
10. The company must have an ISO 9000 certification that covers all policies and voluntary agreements that were meant to define the social contract at the time of certification.

Center for Corporate Auditing, Responsibility and Management policy Authoring