University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

772
The CSR Quality Seal is essentially available for enterprises, NPOs and all kinds of
public or non-public organizations. Still the main target group comprises SMEs with
an intuitionally excellent performance, but without means or know-how to be able to
present their activities to a wider audience in an effective way or to approach
international NGOs like GRI. To all these the CSR Quality Seal provides an
opportunity to differentiate and to communicate their sustainability performance
effectively. Furthermore it serves as a signal sign for their stakeholders to help them
identify socially responsive producers.
Due to the comprehensive application focus the Quality Guidelines rest upon a broad
basis. They were derived by multidisciplinary and multi-institutional expert board
from altogether 334 criteria which had been taken from Ethibel (2009), GRI (GRI G3,
Global Reporting Initiative 2006), SA 8000 (Social Accountability International
2008), ETI (Ethical Trading Initiative 2009), IMUG (IMUG 2009) und EFQM (2004)
in an elaborate and transparent top-down process. By the means of filtering and
clustering we finally devised 48 criteria which cover the field of CSR, including
general requirements of superior and/or strategic character, the economic situation of
the enterprise, its human resource policy, the impact of the enterprise’s action on
society and stakeholder management and finally ecological aspects.
In accordance with a mandatory requirement of Austrian Quality Seals all the criteria
are weighted equally and all the criteria have to be met by the applicant. Moreover,
in the audit the criteria can only be categorized as fulfilled or not fulfilled – there is
no further differentiation. For this reason the experts had to act very carefully in
order to avoid unintentional knock out criteria. As a consequence – and also because
the CSR Quality Seal is especially meant for SMEs – there are some facilitations of
audit compared to other standards. If, for instance, a criterion is very difficult to
prove, an affidavit can replace the objective evidence (e.g. concerning suppliers’
compliance with ILO fundamental conventions.)
In addition to the criteria the CSR Quality Guidelines contain a comprehensive
definition of CSR, instructions for application and implementation and a
questionnaire for self evaluation and preliminary testing. Auditors get the retrieved
data before the on-site inspection, which keeps the audit time very short (a half to
four days). Other standards that have been implemented and certified (e.g. ISO 14
000) will be allowed for.
Comparative Analysis of BLISS and the Austrian Quality
Seal
This section initially investigates similarities of BLISS and the Austrian CSR Quality
Seal and in particular common divergencies to other concepts of implementing
and/or measuring CSR. In the next step the two concepts are contrasted to investigate
the major differences and when which approach is appropriate for an enterprise.