Q-RES Standard and Guidelines for the improvement of the ethical and social performances of the organisation

The Q-RES management model described in the Q-RES Guidelines takes into account the issue of its verifiability by external bodies and it proposes the definition of a Q-RES Standard on which the external verification and the certification of Corporate Social Responsibility of an organisation may be based. In order to develop Q-RES into a certifiable standard on management, we first referred to the most recent body of standard on management systems (ISO 9000. 2000 ed.) and took into consideration the ISO 9004 standard that includes, besides the typical contents of guidelines, the prescriptive test of the norm that can be certified (ISO 9001) thus adding the relationship with the stakeholders to the work. By adapting the ISO 900 standard with reference to the Q-RES model we tried to produce a "certifiable" standard that might be easily understood by experts. This was possible because it was structured like other standards ( that are very similar) and it can be integrated with other well-known management systems. The "Q-RES Standard: Norm and Guidelines for the improvement of ethical and social performances of the organisations" was developed as a standard consisting of two parts: Part A: "The Q-RES model and tools for the management of ethical and social responsibility of organisations" Part B: "The management system for ethical and social responsibility" Part A introduces and explains the Q-RES model and tools for the management of ethical and social responsibility of organisations; its relationship with other management systems and with ISO 9000; its purpose and field of application and the standards of reference and a glossary of terms and definitions. Part B of the Q-RES standard describes the management system of an organisation with respect to the ethical and social responsibility in which all the Q-RES tools can be found: the Corporate Ethical Vision and Code of Ethics are discussed under Responsibilities of Management; Ethical Training is discussed under Resource Management; Organisational systems and internal control are discussed under Product realisation; Social and Ethical Accountability is discussed