Social responsibility standards and global environmental accountability : a developing country perspective

This paper argues that accountability, responsibility and governance go hand in hand. Evolving standards is a part of governance. Unless such a global perspective is adopted “Social Responsibility and the implications for Developing Countries”, which is the theme for this workshop, cannot be unraveled. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how Social Responsibility Standards and their relation to environmental sustainability cannot be addressed without relating it to Global Environmental Degradation, Global Environmental Accountability and Global Environmental Management. Also that there is a need to adopt the coercive connotation of accountability. It raises several issues in this context. The emphasis is on transorganizational development and the need for measurement. The limitations of evolving standards in this context are raised. It argues in favor of having differential standards. The main problem, for implementing differential standards is, however, that this would need a system of metrics that measures social dimensionalities and parameters. For this the new developments in environmental economics need to be incorporated into the framework of evolution of International Standards.