Organization communication regarding ISO 26000 practices in South Korea: focusing on the enlarged scope

Abstract

ISO 26000, issued on November 1, 2010, has enlarged the scope of social responsibility (SR) from corporations to all types of organizations. This article examines how organizations that traditionally have not been concerned with this term, such as public or governmental institutions and nonprofit organizations, interpret this new standard and the notion of SR, especially in the South Korean context. For this research, we observed the SR-related reports and media activity of seven Korean organizations: Korean Standards Association (KSA), the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), Gangdong-gu Office (GDG), Christian Ethics Movement of Korea (CEMK), LG Electronics Union (LGEU), Collective Action (CA), and Working Together Corporation (WTCO). We also carried out interviews with experts in these organizations, who largely work on the subject. Using the organizing theory frame (enactment–selection–retention) of Karl E. Weick, we analyzed three elements of the organizational communication of these institutions: strategy, ISO 26000 messaging, and receivers of the information. ISO 26000 was first actively used in public organizations (e.g., KSA, MKE, and GDG) as a policy tool to expand the concept to all aspects of Korean society, and was later used in certain nonprofit organizations (e.g., LGEU and CEMK) as a new paradigm, creating new concepts such as union SR and churches’ SR that partially accept the international standard in different contexts. Some civil societies, such as CA and WTCO, observe the phenomenon in a passive way to see if it could promote the social values of their organizations. Lastly, in spite of the scope enlargement, we note that SR is still in the range of corporate SR, and the application process in South Korea shows that the social aspect is more easily ignored than the economic and environmental aspects.