The SA8000 social certification standard: Literature review and research directions

Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) is nowadays considered the most important worldwide auditable certification in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). After about ten years of research on SA8000, this paper provides the first comprehensive literature review on this topic. We identify and classify 39 scientific papers and books, highlighting and discussing four main issues: strengths, obstacles, relationship with ISO standards and comparison with other CSR codes. Building on this, we point out some theoretical, methodological and thematic gaps and propose suggestions for future research.