How can quality better help organizations meet their social responsibility objectives and achieve social responsibility business results?

Corporate Social Responsibility is a strategic management model, which includes the economic, social and environmental factors associated to the development of the activities of organizations. Implies a renewed commitment to the stakeholders with whom an organization interacts, such as employees, shareholders, suppliers, customers and consumers and the community.

Social responsibility means:

• Maintain a transparent and ethical behavior
• Contribute to sustainable development, health and social welfare
• Take into account the expectations of stakeholders.
• Comply with applicable laws and consistent with international standards
• Integrate social responsibility throughout the organization
• Social Responsibility Practice in relations with other actors within the network of activities

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has recognized the importance of the issue of global social responsibility and has developed an international standard on the subject: ISO 26000. The objective is to generate an international tool of promoting and spreading the concept and practice of social responsibility, as a concrete way to contribute to sustainable development.

Under this Framework, How can quality better help organizations meet their social responsibility objectives and achieve social responsibility business results?

The organization can achieve its objectives in long term by consistently satisfying the needs and expectations of its interested parties in a balanced way. The management principles that provide the foundation for achieving that objective are the same as those that support ISO 9001; Excellence Models and the Quality Philosophy ideas from Jurán, Deming, Crosby, Ishikawa, among others Quality gurús.

Keeping this principles in the mind is very important to use Quality tools to have a long term planning perspective, constantly monitoring and regularly analyzing the organization's environment to identify trends in stakeholders requisites changes, like for example:

- Alternative, competitive or new product offerings
- New interested parties and their changing needs and expectations,
- Emerging markets and technologies,
- Current and expected changes in statutory and regulatory requirements,
- Potential risks, and information to guide improvement and innovation;
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For all this analysis, quality and six sigma tools are very important and have facts to engage interested parties and keep them informed of the organization's activities and plans.

Is imperative to share with suppliers and partners Quality training, make use with them of wide variety of measures, and make them to be concern about needs and expectations of THEIR interested parties (we are one of them).

The organizations need that its employees, suppliers and partners have enough tools to choose and deploy an overall strategy across the organization, anticipate future resource needs (including the competences required of its people), establish processes appropriate to achieving the organization's strategy, and ensuring that they are capable of responding quickly to changing circumstances, with its current plans and procedures, and to take appropriate corrective and preventive actions, and risk analysis.

Quality philosophy and methodology will be the way to achieve continual improvement of the objectives of Social Responsibility.