공생발전, 연성규범, 그리고 기업의 사회적 책임

On the National Liberation Day of 2011, as Korea's new path for balanced development between the rich and the poor, and the big and the small, President Lee Myung-bak presented “ecosystemic development” which aims at expanding warm capitalism through narrowing income gaps which have been widened under neoliberalism. The concept of “ecosystemic development” calls for the paradigm shift from greedy management to compassionate management. It is also consistent with a “fair society” where a win-win growth strategy between big and small companies is pursued. It seems that the Park Geun-hye's government to be launched in late February 2013 continues to engage in shared growth between the big and the small without any big change in the concept of “ecosystemic development.”Between big and small companies, because there are differences in the bargaining power, the unfair trade practices have been frequently noticed. A specific set of laws that apply to commercial transactions between big and small companies have been enacted but the laws do not score a success. In more detail, several positive laws, such as the Antitrust Regulation and Fair Trade Act, and the Fair Transactions in Subcontracting Act, are now in force to eliminate unfair trade between big and small companies, but their effectiveness does not reach our expectations. The soft laws can be defined to mean norms which are formed by entities other than government, and are not prearranged to be under physical sanctions or legitimate punishment. The ISO 26000, a universal standard regarding social responsibility of organizations, was published in November 2011. Since the ISO is a private international organization, the ISO 26000 falls into the category of soft law. As the ISO standard requires organizations to comply with fair trade practices, there is a thread of connection between the standard and the concept of “ecosystemic development.” In brief, the ISO 26000 will work as a good soft law for ecosystemically developing the society.