Application of social responsibility standards in Poland and the world

Motivation: Social responsibility (SR) is a management concept that is similar to quality management and environmental management. Like every concept, it has a set of tools that can be implemented in organizations that need to use the concept in their activities. Currently, the SR tool catalog is being modified and keeps growing. Two research questions were stated: (1) How does the use of SR standards look like in the world according to current data? (2) How does the use of SR standards look like in individual countries and in Poland according to current data? Aim: The purpose of this article is to analyze the use of standardized SR tools. The essence of SR was first approximated and a set of standardized tools was characterized. The state of their application was analyzed empirically. Results: The most commonly used SR standard is ISO 14001, the others are less commonly used. On the one hand, it is comforting that a voluntary environmental norm is relatively common; on the other hand, it is surprising that tools from other spheres (working conditions, sustainability reporting and stakeholder relations) have little use. With regard to the use of standardized SR tools in different countries, there is a strong tendency among non-developed and stable economies to use these tools, which demonstrates their greater motivation to improve competitiveness with the use of SR. Unfortunately, in Poland this trend does not exist and the analyzed standards are practically not used, except for ISO 14001.