Abstract

For global companies that are implementing their codes of conduct within long supply chains, managing responsibility is increasingly starting to resemble managing quality, which most companies have done for many years. This article compares emerging systems of (total) responsibility management (TRM), to (total) quality management (TQM) systems. This comparison illustrates how managers can think systemically about managing responsibility in the emerging competitive and activist environment by making an analogy to quality management. In the wake of recent corporate integrity scandals, responsibility management is becoming an increasingly critical issue to multiple stakeholders, much as managing quality became an issue for customers in the 1970s and 1980s.