University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT – OPPORTUNITY FOR
SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
IN SLOVENIAN BUSINESS PRACTICE
Štefka Gorenak
Faculty for commercial and business sciences, Lava 7, SI-3000 Celje, Slovenia
Abstract
Businesses today are experiencing profound pressures to reform and improve stakeholder-related
practices and their impacts on stakeholders and the natural environment. This paper researches
the relationship and potential synergies between the quality management and corporate social
responsibility (CSR) where emerging systems from the total quality management systems (TQM)
to the total responsibility management (TRM) have been compared. The evolution of TRM in
companies includes three main components – approaches – inspiration (vision), integration and
improvement/innovation. TRM indicators focus on stakeholders together with triple bottom lines
of economic, social and environmental issues. Gorenje Group represents a successful case of
implementation of TRM, especially of environmental management, into corporate values, culture,
strategies and measurement of sustainable indicators to employees, responsibility to closer and
wider social environment, effects of CSR on consumer behaviour, responsibility to the product
users and services, responsibility to the natural environment, environmental and occupational
health and safety policy. CSR offers the connection between sustainability and long-term
competitiveness.
Keywords: total responsibility management, total quality management, corporate social
responsibility, sustainable development, sustainable indicators, environmental management,
Gorenje Group.
Introduction
The European Union (EU) acknowledged the potential role that corporate
responsibility might play in realising EU’s goal of becoming the most competitive
knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth
with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. Businesses can compete
effectively across the responsibility spectrum, spanning from investment in
environment-friendly technology and raising productivity by improving their
employees’ work-life balance, all way to cutting corners on environment and labour
standards and engaging in corrupt relationships with governments decline. (Zadek,
2004)
Quality management is given in modern companies – a competitive imperative. Why
and how should responsibility be managed? What is responsibility management?
Contemporary literature (Waddock & Bodwell, 2007) answers these questions and at
the same time provides a systemic framework for managing the company’s
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