To counteract the insufficiency of the social structures of international institutions, organizations have acquired, since the beginning of the ‘90s, their own individual rules (codes of conduct) or collective ones (research initiatives.and/or inspection focused efforts, like ETI, SAI, FLA, etc.) The goal is to create new institutional frameworks that set certain limits to the conditions of global competition.
These relevant kinds of corporate management at the beginning of the 21st century require new skills:
- On the part of internal stakeholders: role and skills of human resource representatives, organization of new departments on sustainable development, evolution of buying strategies, renewal of the social dialogue (national and international), etc.
- On the part of new stakeholders (often external: NGO, auditor-verifiers, etc.), they must contribute to the success of research aimed at identifying methods appropriate to the emergence of «stakeholders» in the management of modern organizations. These «external» actors must support the creation of assessments that allow for legitimate social actors to negotiate new working relationships. Their role can be extended to include clarifying complex situations thereby guaranteeing a better convergence between the interests of stakeholders. They can also ensure the transparency of information published by organizations, reinforce the capacity of NGOs to control the issues of their often demanding position, and, among others, control with academic rigor the abusive management of certain producers that make up the newly globalized supply chains, etc.
The Human Rights at Work Foundation contributes to this process by facilitating the implementation of research projects that allow for the development of data that can be both capitalized upon and transferred to professional domains. This relates as much to management techniques for organizations of companies in developed countries as to those in emerging markets, often themselves suppliers or sub-contractors.
The Foundation also helps to qualify stakeholders:
- Traditional stakeholders (staff representatives in the context of social dialogue renewed by corporate social responsibility activities and by new management methods that involve employees in decision-making)
- New stakeholders in the arena of corporate management (NGOs representing various causes, local groups, auditor-verifiers especially)
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