069 Corporate disclosure and Social responsibility (SR)
Tokyo Stock Exchange announced on 2 February 2011 “disclosure awards”. This is an award that values voluntary disclosure that is not required by laws. Any disclosure of companies that received this award is convincing in a way that not only the contents are abundant but also disclosure method to attract people’s attention works well enough for people to easily understand the contents. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is also one of the features seen in the voluntary disclosure, which is not of course required by statutory disclosure.
By the way, ISO26000 issued last year with regards to CSR. According to the ISO/SR committee in Japan Standards Association, this is just a guidance standard, not a acknowledged standard. Therefore, even many of awarded companies have not followed the guidance yet. Since this standard interprets that social responsibilities are not something only companies take, it mentions a word “Social Responsibility (SR)” instead of CSR.
It seems that ISO26000 will be a often-discussed topic in talking about disclosure, but that is only if this “not acknowledged standard” is to be welcomed by companies.
