A corporate social responsibility (CSR) model – a QFD-based approach

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies encourage the company to make a positive impact on the environment and stakeholders, which include consumers, employees, investors, communities and others. To enrich the practice of CSR initiatives, we developed an approach for examining the relationship between various CSR indicators (CSRIs) and outcomes for a specific enterprise, based on the quality function deployment (QFD) method. For a specific business case (data were collected from a manufacturing plant in the chemical engineering and energy industry), an adapted House of Quality (HOQ) matrix was created using a combined input from various senior and line managers. This matrix summarises the desired improvements in the CSR results and connects them to the relevant reportable CSRIs. Based on the HOQ matrix, indicators and outcomes that maximise the desired results of the CSR policy were chosen using the mean square error criterion. We found that when utilising the QFD-based approach, the business could quantify strategic priorities regarding CSR initiatives. The applied approach offers a scientific/engineering method for identifying a subset of vital CSRIs necessary to achieve the best CSR outcomes for all types of businesses at all stages of their development.

Keywords:

• corporate social responsibility
• business performance
• CSR outcomes
• quality function deployment
• mean square error
• decision-making

Acknowledgements

We thank Ms Liel Ziv for her help in analysing quantitative data using SPSS. We greatly appreciate the professional help of Mr Evgeny Vishnevetsky in the effective management of the experts’ survey performance. We are indebted to trustworthy business managers in the studied manufacturing plant in the chemical engineering and energy industry for their invaluable cooperation in the experts’ evaluation of the CSR initiatives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.