Mercantile Society of Sor

The Mercantile Society of Sor is an international business association based on the isle of Valdavia in Mundaqar. It was formerly the Oubastine port authority responsible for ensuring the quality of imported goods, but that organization was ended during the rise of the Republic of Braqara. In 1962, Lucas Saul de Micho's Public Prosperity Party renewed the Society as a reward for businesses that complied with the PPP's industrialization schemes. Maizah Hanzila's government in 1985 elevated the Society from the national to the federal level and combined it with her own Uniform State Statutes Reclassification Commission to form a joint business ethics society and pseudo-governmental regulatory organization. The Society's board recommends best practices to the Chairman of Mundaqar, which are often then codified. While businesses are not legally required to be certified by the Society to do business in Mundaqar, almost all organizations that receive contracts from the Federal or Braqaran governments have at least minimal compliance with Society ethical practices.

Organizational structure

The Society is governed by a board of governors who are elected by the member organizations. The board appoints a Director-General who oversees the certification of organizations, the admission of new members, and other executive issues. The board itself hosts conferences throughout the year to addresses concerns in trade and business administration. At the end of each year, the board issues an annual report. The annual report made available to every nation with businesses in the Society, though most prominently the Chairman of Mundaqar takes up the report in a special plenary session of the Confederal Committee on the Continuation of the Peace.

Certification & Membership

Businesses are certified at an initial stage through a self-reported questionnaire which are aggregated with all other reports from the same year. Businesses are compared to each other and are assigned a rating from "unsatisfactory" to "exceptional". These S-Grade certifications are for managerial use only and do not have any oversight from the Society, but are often publicized by businesses and organizations anyways. Certifications must be renewed every five years, even by member organizations. A membership-grade or M-Grade certification (which does not guarantee membership) requires that organizations turn over internal and external audit records and allow the Director-General's office to conduct its own audits as required. Because of the large scale of M-Grade certifications, only a small group of businesses can apply each year, but there are grants from governments to fund additional M-Grade certifications, especially Mundaqar.

Membership in the Society is granted on a case by case basis. Most organizations that become members, however, are in good standing with their nation of origin, operate in more than one nation, and receive an M-Grade of at least "satisfactory".

Benchmarks

The Society publishes its benchmark index every year which contains a list of priorities for improving business operations. The weighting changes from year to year, with sustainability recently emerging as a high priority. There have been consistent high priority benchmarks, however, that tend to define the rating of an organization including: financial transparency; legal compliance; and labor relations.