The adoption of corporate social responsibility criteria (CSR) in business management implies:

• The FORMALISATION of policies and management systems in economic, social and environmental fields.
• Training TRANSPARENCY with respect to the results reached in such fields.
• And external AUDITS of them.

Companies exercise their social responsibility when they satisfy the expectations of their behaviour with respect to the different groups of interests (stakeholders: employees, partners, clients, local communities, the environment, stockholders, suppliers), contributing to the sustainable social and environmental development.

Formalisation, in practical terms, is the creation of management policies and systems, and others, in the following fields: Relations with stockholders, employees, the community and social actions, environmental management, client relations, and all that involved in the company’s global strategy.

The formalisation of programmes in the field of CSR generally adopts a top down focus. First of all, it adopts formal policies in different fields of relations with stakeholders to then articulate management systems that convert said policies into different fields of the organisation.

In this sense, the informative requirements have increased internationally for companies in social and environmental fields, as a result of the growing interest of consumers and investors in company’s social and environmental practices.

Internationally, there is already a commonly accepted standard for information on a company’s sustainability or corporate social responsibility: the Global Reporting Initiative.