Regarding Social Responsibility [1, 2, 4]
I. INTRODUCTION
There is an increasing world-wide expectation that organizations will become more socially responsible and contribute toward improving the health and welfare of society and ensuring healthy eco-systems. More than ever before, social, socio-economic, and environmental influences are being considered in measuring and evaluating an organization’s performance. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is in the process of developing a new international standard potentially applicable to all organizations to provide guidance on the underlying principles of social responsibility. Seven core areas of social responsibility are defined: organizational governance, human rights, labor practices, the environment, fair operating practices, consumer issues, and community involvement and development.
While these various principles and practices of social responsibility are in the process of being developed for the organization, nowhere are there parallel efforts being made to allocate responsibility to individual professions within the organization, or even to identify opportunities for contribution. Each profession through its professional associations must thus take stock of its purpose and define and redefine itself in a process of continual improvement in order to maintain its relevancy and rise to the evolving public demand for a more responsible society.
II. THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR AND OBLIGATIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGER
It may be appear obvious that of the seven developing core areas of social responsibility, the environment is one that should coincide well with the responsibilities of the professional environmental manager. However, social responsibility requires an understanding that goes beyond the rule of law and recognizes obligations that are not mandated by law. This expanded perspective is broader than the most common expectations of the environmental manager and include not only protection of the natural environment and pollution prevention, but also sustainable resource use, restoration of the natural environment and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Thus the environmental management profession needs to redefine itself in this regard.
Similarly, there are aspects of the remaining six core areas of social responsibility that have elements that coincide with the responsibilities of the environmental manager, particularly when the profession is integrated with areas of occupational health and safety, and requisite understandings that go beyond what has been common in the past.
What we want to know here involve the obligations we face and the opportunities that may be available to us as we move toward a more socially responsible future.
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December 4, 2007 by
Brian Butler ,
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This paper considers the environmental managers’ views on environmental work and about the role and situation of an environmental manager. The author classifies the demand on an environmental manager as falling into three categories, internal, external and environmental.
This paper acclaims the environmental manager as the societal conscience of an organization, who is accountable to within the organization as well as to the external stakeholders and to nature. Environmental managers have to creatively incorporate the sustainability issue wherever and whenever possible in the organization. The demands coming from the outside of an organization are becoming increasingly more important to the environmental manager. As society becomes more concerned with the environmental issues, governmental intervention increases and it creates a pressure on the organization. In summary, the environmental managers take the environmental advocacy part of their role with greatest earnestness. Environmental managers play the worthy role to coordinate the corporate and environmental interests.
