CSR is the quality management of the future

• Quality - in the beginning, everything was good
• Quality - between aspiration and reality
• Follow up - A subset of quality
• The beginning and the end of quality
• Conclusion: CSR - Quality management of the future

Quality - in the beginning, everything was good

In its early days, quality, quality management, and quality management systems were all about making sure nothing went wrong. Cars were supposed to brake when and only when the pedal was pressed, and airplanes were supposed to return to the earth's surface when and only when that was exactly what was intended. And to do so in a controlled manner, of course. Nothing unforeseen was supposed to happen. So far, so good. And, of course, the customer should also be satisfied.

But a lot has happened. Only slowly and insidiously and somehow not noticeably. Not yet; at least not for us in Europe. When airplanes crash, it leads to an immediately visible and tangible disaster. The disaster that is currently unfolding is not yet truly visible and tangible. At least not if you don't want to see and feel it. The Ahr valley flooding or the dying forests, the hot summers and lack of rainfall - well, yes.

And now it's getting difficult with the "everything is good!" A lot has happened, albeit outside the car, outside the airplane and beyond the customer. The well-known standards have been talking about external issues and interested parties since 2015 at the latest. It is no longer necessary to actively look there. All of this is now obvious and can no longer be ignored. And so we have a new quality in quality management. Quality that is still defined as the degree to which requirements are met.

Quality - between aspiration and reality

We are talking about an economy that has long been living beyond the means of what is feasible in the long term. We have an ecology that is drifting toward collapse in the medium and even short term. And we have a social coexistence in which it seems to be a matter of course that around 160 million children had to work in 2021. These are just three examples. What does this have to do with quality? What about the continuous improvement of products and services?

The term "quality" is commonly understood to mean that something is good. It's nice that the term "quality" has such a positive connotation. But at this point we need to be more specific. What does "good" mean? "Good" for whom? For everyone? Hardly.

It may be that we are satisfied with products and that these products don't crash. So they would be good per se. Our aspiration is therefore fulfilled. But the reality is that this "good" can include child labor, overexploitation of nature and legal or illegal tax tricks.

The bill for this will be presented. Perhaps not today. Perhaps not to us either. But it is already on its way. This is the approach for a new quality management, for a new understanding of quality management: to bring reality closer to the aspiration. And certainly not the other way around. And as the poet Friedrich Dürrenmatt said so aptly: "Human knowledge has run away from human action, that is our tragedy." Surely we cannot simply accept this!

Follow-up: A subset of quality

This tragedy must be countered by quality management. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is of course much more than climate protection, even if this is always equated. We save the bees in Bavaria by signing a petition for a referendum and we are already sustainable. That is true, but only to a small extent. Saving bees by signing a petition is a start, but then we actually have to do the saving - and then we need to think ahead.

And that means: sustainable action is when and where we could continue to act in this way now and forever without getting us all - or future generations - into trouble. By the way, "everyone" means everyone. It means the interested parties. That sounds simple. But it is not.

Because this is about moral issues. It is about what is possible and legal, but what may better be left alone. Because one's own advantage comes at the expense of others. The Supply Chain Duty of Care Act is exactly the right way to go, but only if everyone follows it. Everyone means everyone.

When we eat a tasty piece of meat, we are initially impressed and talk about good quality. But the fact that the animal may have spent its entire life crammed into unspeakable crate stalls is irrelevant for the time being. As customers, we are satisfied because it tastes good. But can we speak of quality if the way to the product is horrible? Hardly. A high-quality product or service takes its development history into its quality biography. The quality of the result must never outshine the preceding structural and process quality.

If slaughterhouse employees are exploited with legal tricks to avoid the minimum wage or with other methods, then the tasty meat must not slip through our fingers as being "good". "Quality meat" is more than just tasty. This must be anchored in the general understanding of quality. And in this respect, quality management is about making the world with all its internal and external stakeholders a better place. This is not an option. It is a necessity.

The beginning and the end of quality

It is important to think about where quality begins, how it can be shaped and also where it ends. In other words: Where does the quality of the piece of meat begin and where does it end? Quality must be understood as an All; and the All begins, so to speak, where the conventional, the necessary ends. If all is to be good, then organizations are now called upon for the sake of the future to think quality and quality management far beyond themselves and their traditional customers. And to incorporate the idea of CSR into the quality management of the future. There are several perspectives that need to be taken into account when planning and managing this.

First perspective: Employees - the microcosm

The labor market is empty in large parts of Germany and for many companies it is virtually impossible to recruit new employees. At first, it is easy to attribute the lack of applicants to the shortage of skilled workers. This is mentally convenient because a culprit has been found: the labor market. And that means: not your own company.

This ignores the fact that there are some companies that are not suffering from a shortage of skilled workers. They can fill all positions. They have enough applicants. They can even choose the best ones and send the others away. How can that be?

The answer is simple: it's down to quality. These companies have managed to develop their internal quality and communicate it to the outside world in such a way that it appeals and is believed. This attracts people to these companies who want to get involved. The consequence of this is the development of an increasingly strong corporate brand and thus also employer brand. This form of internal quality must be recognized and promoted.

After all, the future success of companies will be generated not everywhere, but in large parts of the corporate landscape, through people. Work in the companies of the future must not simply be a job. Jobs will be automated. Work in companies must be creative, challenging, experimental and, of course, promising. It is what cannot be automated: Creativity quality.

Second perspective: Customers - the mesocosmos

In the digital age, in which the physical world is increasingly being mapped into the digital world, it is becoming more and more possible to create offers that until recently seemed unthinkable. This is not least due to the possibilities of individualized automation. This means that customer wishes can be fulfilled with a precision and perfection of variety. This is quality at its best, defined as the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.

However, the problem for organizations arises just a small step behind precision and perfection: Automated means that anyone can do it. The more it is automated, the less recognizable and tangible differences become. If the company stops at precision, it becomes interchangeable. Where humans no longer play a significant role in the production or service process, everything becomes the same.

And this is where it gets really interesting when we talk about the quality concept of the future. This is because differentiation will become possible where humans act beyond the automated. And this differentiation will have to relate less to the product or the core service and much more to what surrounds the customer.

The classic user story comes into play. In what context does the customer operate, how is the individualized product used in this context and how can your own company, with its committed and thoughtful employees, make an overall experience possible for its customers? This is what quality must focus on and align itself with in the future: The overall experience beyond the actual product, beyond the core business. This cannot be automated. That is differentiation. Individualized automation creates the basis and people create the enthusiasm, the emotions, the overall experience. The company thus becomes part of the story that the customer calls their life. That is everything around the custome

Third perspective: Interested parties - the micro-macrocosm

Once upon a time, it was so easy to buy a product and leave it at that. Nowadays, people want to know where and how the products end up on the shelves and where they are recycled after use. None of this is actually very relevant to the product itself, but it has become very important for the overall context.

In addition to the classic customer who simply wants a good product, there are now also very interested customers. In addition, there are many other interested parties who don't even care about the product itself as an object of purchase, but who are interested in the general conditions of the product and the company. And the number of interested parties is growing.

Greta Thunberg is certainly the figurehead of the interested parties at the moment. Quality today must encompass the whole. Otherwise it is no longer possible. There are interested or potentially interested parties everywhere, and there are enough companies that have already felt the pain of this interest. Quality is everything.

Fourth perspective: The world - our macrocosm

The great school of quality in the future is the one that goes beyond conscious or unconscious requirements. In other words, it is no longer about for whom the company can fulfill which requirements. Rather, it is about how the world can become a better place and what contribution the company is willing and able to make in the context of corporate responsibility.

One possible as well as sensible anchor point for this is the UN's now famous 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Quality thinking is big for those companies that take a concrete approach to these goals with a CSR strategy and contribute to their realization. The 17 global Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda are addressed to governments worldwide, but also to civil society, the private sector and academia.

They will be concisely enumerated here because of their great global relevance for the present and for future generations:

• End poverty
• End hunger - achieve food security
• Healthy lives for all
• Education for all
• Gender equality
• Water and sanitation for all
• Sustainable and modern energy for all (SDG and ISO 50001)
• Sustainable economic growth and decent work for all
• Resilient infrastructure and sustainable industrialization
• Reduce inequality
• Make cities and settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
• Sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
• Conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources
• Protect terrestrial ecosystems
• Peace, justice and effective public institutions
• Strengthen the means of implementation and global partnership

None of these goals should come as a surprise. They are easy to understand and quick to endorse. They are goals that define us as human beings - or at least should define us. This is the quality in which everything is at stake, because they are the current demands on us all.

Due to their economic strength - and the corporate responsibility they bear as a result - companies have a range of opportunities to contribute to the realization of these corporate social responsibility goals, either alone or in cooperation with others.

Conclusion: CSR - Quality management of the future

Making the world a better place with quality: Sustainable organizations with an understanding of quality far beyond themselves. That is the core message to the community. Simply take total quality management literally. And the same goes for the continuous improvement process (CIP)!

ISO 9001:2015, with which we are all familiar, not only provides the approach, but also the obligation: What about external and internal issues? What about fact-based decision-making? What about the interested parties, if we think beyond the customers who finance us? Does this have an impact on our "sustainable" quality policy, which is hopefully more meaningful than "The customer is king!"? Are our goals in line with our policy? Is sustainability or CSR a topic in our processes? In the internal audits? In the management review?

With the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) available free of charge, with the 17 sustainability goals (and the 169 sub-goals!) of the United Nations (the "Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development") or with the ISO 26000 standard, we have plenty of opportunities to get started right away.

Most of what we want to achieve has already been thought through in detail and pragmatically. We "merely" have to want it - and do it. A comprehensive (quality) management system cannot, indeed must not, close itself off to this. Let's start to see quality as a CSR strategy and CSR as the quality management of the future. And we will see this through to the end within our sphere of influence. It is much more than just an option.

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