Corporate social responsibility standards: is it possible to meet diverse customer requirements?

The purpose of the study is to review the internationally recognised CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) standards, codes of conduct (cross-industry and industry-specific used in electronics, automotive and steel industry) and selected codes and supplier evaluation approaches applied by individual customer organisations. It also aims to identify problems related to CSR compliance demonstration from the view of supplier organization supplying its products for more industry sectors. Literature review, interview with the selected large manufacturing organisation and synthesis of information were conducted to achieve the purpose of the study. The difficulties for supplier organisations during CSR verifications and audits conducted by customers or third parties according to a variety of standards are discussed in the paper. It often results from different structure, terminology and content of the CSR standards and codes. One of the possible solutions is to create and maintain the intelligent database of CSR requirements of customer organisations. There is a lack of studies dealing with the existence of various CSR standards and codes and its impact on suppliers supplying their products to more industry sectors. The paper contributes to fill the knowledge gap and extend the existing literature.