El comercio justo y la responsabilidad social empresarial.

Reflexiones desde los sistemas de certificación autónoma

Abstract

This paper makes a contrast of autonomous certification processes within two different models of corporate management that raise a social and ecological commitment with the environment in which both are developed: Fair Trade and Corporate Social Responsibility. Both projects have dissimilar missions and objectives; nevertheless, one of their important angles is the concern on methods of autonomous certification. From this logic, both initiatives are deeply interested in offering true, precise, reliable and opportune information to the public about the services, goods and outputs that deliver to society. The hypothesis is that FT has developed a much more effective and much better standardized model of autonomous certification than the ones that the CSR has developed, mainly due to the great heterogeneity and diversity of the procedures that compose the latter. For this reason, the CSR has, from the point of view of the autonomous certification, an important alternative –among others– in which it could be enormously developed, assumption which is one of our main conclusions. This could be the route that finally allows CSR to establish itself as a tool to value, divulge and differentiate corporations that effectively have a social responsibility.