CSR is the quality management of the future

Quality: It All Started with "Nothing Went Wrong"

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 since then. At first, it happened slowly and almost imperceptibly. When an aircraft crashes, the resulting disaster is immediate, visible and tangible. The disaster unfolding today, however, has become visible and tangible in Europe at the latest since the summer of 2026. Even if some were unwilling to see or feel it: Europe was burning. The Ahr Valley floods, dying forests, increasingly hot summers and a lack of rainfall – things are moving forward, unfortunately in entirely the wrong direction. And now, the “Nothing Is Happening!” narrative is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. A lot has happened, even if it has happened outside the car, outside the aircraft and beyond the customer.

The standards we all know have been referring to external issues and interested parties since at least 2015. Significantly, the revisions of ISO 14001:2026 and ISO 9001:2026 have not changed this – quite the contrary. The new ISO 9001 goes one step further: it no longer merely requires organizations to identify interested parties, but also to conduct a methodologically sound analysis of their context. All of this is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. And with it, we are seeing a new dimension of quality management. Quality that is still defined as the degree to which requirements are fulfilled.

Quality: Between Aspiration and Reality

We are dealing with an economy that has long been living beyond what is sustainable in the long term. We have an environment that is drifting towards collapse in the medium – and even the short – term. And we have a society in which it seems perfectly normal that, even in 2024, almost 138 million children are still engaged in child labour. These are just three examples. What does any of this have to do with quality? What does it have to do with 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.

Sooner or later, the bill for these hidden costs will come due. Perhaps not today. Perhaps not to us directly. 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!

Sustainability: 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 what does this mean? Sustainable action is always about being able to continue as we are today – now and indefinitely – without causing difficulties for ourselves or for future generations. And by “all,” we really do mean everyone. These are the interested parties. It sounds simple. But it isn’t. In his book The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World, Australian philosopher Roman Krznaric calls on us to consider the “Seven Generations Principle” followed by some Indigenous peoples of North America when making decisions. Under this principle, every decision is assessed in terms of its impact on the seven generations that follow. In the context of sustainable business, this idea is hard to surpass: Who do we want to have been today when viewed from the perspective of the seventh generation to come?

This ultimately also raises questions of ethics. It is about what may be possible and legal, but what would nevertheless be better left undone – because one’s own advantage comes at the expense of others. If a company makes this principle part of its stated values, as many like to do, it must be reflected in its objectives and, indirectly, in its processes. The new ISO 9001:2026 provides senior management with a clear starting point here: “Top management shall demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to the quality management system by: … i) promoting a quality culture and ethical behaviour.” (5.1.1) The standard goes on to explain: “An organization’s quality culture and ethical behaviour are reflected in its shared values, attitudes and established practices.”

When we eat a tasty schnitzel, 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 worth considering where quality begins, how it can be shaped, and where it ends. In other words: Where does the quality of a schnitzel begin and where does it end? Quality must therefore be understood as a whole – and this whole, so to speak, begins where the conventional and the necessary end. ISO 9001:2026 puts this into more precise terms: “Top management shall establish a quality policy that: … takes into account the context of the organization and supports its strategic direction.” (5.2.1)

If we want things to turn out well, organizations today – and with the future in mind – are called upon to think about quality and quality management far beyond themselves, their traditional customers and the immediate business context, and to consider the bigger picture. And there is another aspect: incorporating the principles of CSR into the quality management of the future. When it comes to planning and managing this approach, there are several perspectives that need to be taken into account.

Perspective 1: Employees - The Microcosm

The labour market is divided in some sectors of the German economy. While skilled workers are still in short supply in healthcare, skilled trades, construction and IT, industry is seeing significant job cuts and hiring freezes in many places. Nevertheless, for many companies, attracting new employees remains an apparently impossible task. It is easy to attribute the lack of applicants to the shortage of skilled workers. This is intellectually convenient because it provides someone to blame: the labour market. In other words, it is not the company itself.

What this overlooks is that there are companies in these very sectors that are not suffering from the shortage of skilled workers. They can fill all their vacancies. They have enough applicants. In fact, they can choose the best among them and turn the rest away. How can this be?

The answer is simple: it comes down to quality – and, not least, to the concept of a quality culture, which has now been introduced into the standard. These companies have succeeded in strengthening their internal quality and communicating it externally in such a way that it resonates with people – and is believed. As a result, people join these companies because they genuinely want to contribute there. The consequence is the development of an increasingly strong corporate brand and, with it, a strong employer brand. This form of internal quality needs to be recognized and actively fostered.

Because the path to future business success will not depend on people everywhere, but in large parts of the corporate landscape, it will depend on them. Work in the companies of the future must not simply be a job. Jobs will be automated and, sooner rather than later, taken over by AI agents. Work in the companies of the future must be creative, challenging, experimental and, of course, capable of delivering results. It is what cannot be automated: human-centred creative quality.

Perspective 2: Customers - The Mesocosm

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 surrounding the customer.

Perspective 3: 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.

Today, this type of customer is represented by the growing number of people interested in civil society and institutional matters. 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.

Perspective 4: 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 Is the Future of Quality Management

Making the world a better place through quality: Sustainable organizations with a commitment to quality go far beyond their own interests. That is the core message for the community. Take Total Quality Management literally—and the continuous improvement process (CIP) as well!

The ISO 9001 standard, familiar to us all, not only provides the framework for this but actually makes it an obligation:

• What about external and internal issues?
• What about fact-based decision-making?
• What about stakeholders when we think beyond the customers who fund us?
• Does this influence our “sustainable” quality policy, which is hopefully more meaningful than “The customer is king!”?
• Are our goals aligned with our policy?
• Is sustainability or CSR an issue in our processes? In internal audits? In the management review?

With the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards available free of charge, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (and 169 targets!) of the United Nations (the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”), or the ISO 26000 guidance, we have plenty of opportunities to get started right away.

Most of what we should be striving for has already been thought through in detail and in a pragmatic way. We “just” need to want it – and do it. A comprehensive quality management system cannot – and indeed must not – turn a blind eye to this. Let’s start viewing quality as a CSR strategy and CSR as the quality management of the future. And let’s see this through to the end within our sphere of influence. It’s much more than just an option.

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