Managing for quality is breaking new ground. Increasingly, organizations are being encouraged to look at the entire landscape unfolding before them from the perspective of a balanced array of outcomes characterized by what authors Andrew Savitz and Karl Weber call The Triple Bottom Line (Jossey-Bass, 2006) of people, planet, and profits.

Quality management has always taken people and profits into consideration; now, a third dimension has been added that encompasses environmental sustainability and stewardship. Once-separate societies have begun to band together ideologically on environmental issues, taking fitful, yet visible and increasingly concerted action to shore up the “quality dikes” that Joseph Juran posited years ago. These efforts appear certain to result in widespread change in legislation controlling aspects of quality we long have taken for granted.

How are organizations being affected by changes in perceived social responsibility? Three major forces must be reckoned with.

 …