Conditions governing the performance of employment and environmental standards socioeconomic considerations and proposals based on case histories from cheminals and food manufacturing industries

Many directors of chemicals companies see the proliferation of standards and norms as prejudicial to long-term business performance. Although there can no longer be any doubt that the motivational character of these standards and norms means that they are focused on the future and open the way to innovative research, manufacturing companies in this industry feel surrounded and beset by a constant stream of health, financial, environmental and other directives, tangled up in the obscurity of an excessively complex norm-setting environment and are torn between the contradictory positions taken by a multitude of normative institutions, certification organizations and local, national, European and international accreditation agencies. These three images are an accurate reflection of what is really felt within companies. On this basis, we may attempt to rank these European Union-style norms, which we can recognize as such from the multiplicity of terms used to describe them - rules, directives, obligatory decisions, recommendations and non-binding opinions. For this purpose, we will use the words "standard" and "norm" in their broadest sense, whilst emphasising that in the chemicals industry, notwithstanding the celebrated precautionary principle and aversion to risk-taking at every level of responsibility, standards and norms are regulatory in nature or form the basis for legislation, and are therefore legally-enforceable. They therefore come into the category of obligatory exogenous standards and norms, and are focused on four major areas: 1) commerce and trade, 2) accounting and financial information, 3) quality, safety and the environment and 4) labour relations and social issues at large.