Valuable Resource
Talent development is addressed in three key components of sustainability management systems: international standards, social responsibility (SR) reporting and performance excellence frameworks....
Innovation Imperative: The Greater Good
Innovation can provide solutions to many social problems, but it can also be the cause of those problems. The financial sector is a good example of an area in which both sides of the social responsibility coin are evident....
Career Corner: Should You Blow the Whistle?
Becoming a whistle-blower is no easy choice, even for quality professionals knowledgeable of organizational behavior and accustomed to audit processes with clear guidelines for nonconformance and corrective action....
Career Corner: Planning Ahead
When TQM became a strategic imperative for competitive advantage, celebrity CEOs became cheerleaders, quality maturity was measured by more vice presidents for quality, and academics traced quality’s history from inspection to customer-focused strategy....
Getting on Track
ISO 26000 is here. Are you ready? Maybe the better question is: Do you care? You should. ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility has been touted as the new standard that can help manage social responsibility issues at your organization....
Getting on Track/Por el Buen Camino
ISO 26000 is here. Are you ready? Maybe the better question is: Do you care? You should. ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility has been touted as the new standard that can help manage social responsibility issues at your organization....
Career Corner: Right, Wrong, Good, Bad or Indifferent?
Although the new guidance standard for social responsibility (SR), ISO 26000, will be a completely voluntary guidance standard—not a certification standard1—how best to implement and sustain the organizational behaviors it will prescribe deserves...
Standards Outlook: Taking Responsibility
Social responsibility and sustainability are issues that have gotten the attention of most countries around the world, and they're growing in importance in quality circles....
Back in Circulation
As the applications for lean expand, organizations must realize lean’s usefulness goes beyond environmental efforts. But first, we must look at the history of lean and to understand how its future fully complements social responsibility....
Expert Answers: December 2008
Get your boss to pay for training ... Three or six-sigma process?
Q: I’d like to know which process is better controlled: a three-sigma process or a six-sigma process. If the context of your question relates to statistical process control (SPC), then a six-sigma process is better controlled. Q: Will the new ISO 26000 st...
Strong Foundation, Solid Future
In the wake of the scandals five years ago that shook consumer confidence in business leaders and the economy, I co-wrote an article about the resurgence of social responsibility on the corporate landscape and increased public awareness on the topic....
Career Corner: Corporations Tout Social Responsibility
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has added “governance and social responsibilities” to its leadership criteria, codes of conduct are more prevalent, and ethics has taken on new importance in corporate training and business school curricula. In ...
Quality Glossary
Five years after it published its first glossary of quality terms, ASQ has revised that glossary with updated definitions and new entries, many from the lean glossary published in 2005. This reference of terms, acronyms, and prominent figures in the...
Making Social Responsibility the Standard
In 2003 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) responded to pressure from large multinational enterprises by forming an advisory group to consider the need for a corporate social responsibility (CSR) standard. The result is ISO 26000:...
