CSR and Management Practices: The Role of CSR-Standards in Brazil

The adoption of standards and tools has been an important element of the CSR-movement in Brazil, and organizations in the country have turned out to be pioneers in using voluntary certification schemes or contributed to standards such as ISO26000 which has been developed under common leadership of Brazil and Sweden. Today, Brazil is a leading country in terms of commodity based CSR-certifications and has introduced mandatory CSR-reporting regulations for the energy, public company and banking sector. Since the launch of the first Ethos Indicators for Social Responsibility, the number of companies that apply standards and report against the GRI or IIRC-Frameworks has constantly grown. This chapter describes the evolution and formalization of the CSR-movement in Brazil and analyzes how a pre-existing company culture of quality certifications has favored the fact that many organizations adopted voluntary CSR-certifications schemes. Based on expert consultations and data collection, it highlights the most important standards used in Brazil and tries to respond to the question, if standardization has helped to prevent a major “backlash” of CSR-practices during the economic crisis or if important areas of sustainability management have suffered retraction.