Coporate Societal Responsibility

For Atlas-GOSS it's more than just a social responsibility. In the key areas of Poverty and Climate Change, the Outsourcing Industry is one of the most powerful levers globally for effecting positive global change.

At Atlas-GOSS we are supporters of the market based approach to societal responsibility in that:

• By and large, free markets and capitalism have been at the centre of economic and social development over the past two hundred years and that improvements in health, longevity or infant mortality (for example) have only been possible because economies - driven by free enterprise - have progressed.
• In order to attract quality workers, it is necessary for companies to offer better pay and conditions which leads to an overall rise in standards and to wealth creation.
• Investment in less developed countries contributes to the welfare of those societies, notwithstanding that these countries have fewer protections in place for workers. Failure to invest in these countries decreases the opportunity to increase social welfare.
• Free markets contribute to the effective management of scarce resources. The prices of many commodities have fallen in recent years. This contradicts the notion of scarcity, and may be attributed to improvements in technology leading to the more efficient use of resources.

There are indeed occasions when externalities, such as the costs of pollution are not built into normal market prices in a free market. In these circumstances, regulatory intervention is important to redress the balance, to ensure that costs and benefits are correctly aligned.

Whilst regulation is necessary in certain circumstances, over regulation creates barriers to entry into a market. These barriers increase the opportunities for excess profits, to the delight of the market participants, but do little to serve the interests of society as a whole.

To demonstrate good business citizenship, Atlas-GOSS advocates that OSPs and their Clients, Partners and Suppliers pursue compliance with the key CSR standards, including:

• The ISO 14001 environmental management standard
• AccountAbility's AA1000 standard, based on John Elkington's triple bottom line (3BL) reporting
• Global Reporting Initiative's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines
• Social Accountability International's SA8000 standard