Without socially responsible leaders, organizations striving towards performance excellence in today’s market will get left behind.  Ethical behavior and considerations for societal well-being are crucial elements to running a quality business.  Leaders need to be role models for their organization by focusing on ethics and the protection of public health, safety, and the environment. The protection of these three elements includes the organization’s operations, as well as the life cycles of products.  Effective planning will help to anticipate adverse impacts from production, distribution, transportation, use, and disposal of products.

Effective planning will help to prevent problems, provide a response if problems occur, and make available information and support needed to maintain public awareness, safety, and confidence.  Henry Ford Health System, one of the winners of the 2011 Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award for Health Care, know how to think about these big-picture issues; HFHS community benefit initiatives have increased by almost 78 percent since 2006.  HFHS’s commitment to patient safety is further emphasized through its evidence-based global harm campaign (evidence-based medicine integrates an individual doctor’s examining and diagnostic skills for a specific patient with the best available evidence from medical research) to reduce or eliminate some 23 sources of harm.  According to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, this program is a national best practice.  HFHS’s performance in relation to overall global harm has improved from approximately 60 harm events per 1,000 patients in the first quarter of 2008 to 40 harm events per 1,000 patients in the second quarter of 2011.  A prime example of this success is HFHS’s reduction in central-line infections from 10 per year to three per year since 2008.

For many organizations, the product design stage is critical from the perspective of public responsibility.  Design decisions impact production processes and often the content of municipal and industrial waste.  Effective design strategies will anticipate environmental concerns and responsibilities.  Organizations must not only strive to meet all local, state, and federal laws and regulatory requirements, but they can treat these and related requirements as opportunities for improvement beyond mere compliance.  There is always room for improvement!

Organizations can stress ethical behavior in all stakeholder transactions and interactions, which should be monitored by the organization’s governing body.  “Societal well-being and benefit” refers to leadership and support – within the limits of an organization’s resources—of publicly important purposes.  A great example of this can be found at HFHS. Their workforce supports southeast Michigan with annually increasing levels of community service.  This includes the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk (for which HFHS is the number one contributing health system in the country and third-ranked company overall in 2011); the growing number of volunteers involved in philanthropic activities (from fewer than 1,000 in 2006 to greater than 2,300 in 2011); and an increasing number of volunteer hours (from under 300,000 in 2006 to above 500,000 in 2010).  Other examples might include improving education and healthcare in your community, pursuing environmental excellence, being a role model for socially important issues, practicing resource conservation, performing community service, improving industry and business practices, and sharing non-proprietary information.  Setting the standard as a role-model organization within your community will influence other organizations, private and public, to partner for these purposes.

Source: Juran’s Quality Handbook, The Complete Guide to Performance Excellence, 6th Edition

Source: 2011 Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award Winners

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