Linking quality citizenship to process design: a quality management perspective

Abstract

As organisations emphasise their role in society, there is a need to determine the effect of socially responsible practices on organisational processes and firm performance. Although the effect of corporate social responsibility on firm performance has been addressed from different perspectives, little is known about the influence of corporate social responsibility on organisational processes and internal operations of firms. The paper aims to make a link between corporate social responsibility, quality management practices and quality outcomes through emphasising quality citizenship as one of the practices associated with quality management. This paper provides a new perspective on the link between quality citizenship and product/process design within the quality management framework. The stakeholder theory of the firm is used to explain the formation and development of new management practices within a firm. Data were collected from managers in the petroleum industry to examine the role of quality citizenship on design and development of organisational processes. The results show that quality citizenship has a significant effect on employee involvement and an indirect effect on process design. Quality citizenship enables firms to obtain a much broader perspective on product/process design and facilitates design and development of products, services and processes that meet the needs of a broader set of customers – the stakeholders.

Keywords:

• quality citizenship
• quality management
• corporate social responsibility
• stakeholder theory
• process design
• internal quality results

Notes

1. Quality citizenship is defined and conceptualised as an integral part of the firm’s overall quality management practice. As such, quality citizenship can be regarded as a subset of corporate social responsibility within an existing quality system of a firm. The review of the literature on corporate social responsibility is needed to address the link between quality citizenship and firm performance.