Understanding Ethics-Quality Linkages In The Private And Public Sectors

Abstract

Customers ultimately define a product, while quality is best defined from the demand side. Thus, quality may be considered a weighted sum of quality attributes, a_i. This summation may be partitioned in various ways. The most plausible partitioning for both private industry and the public sectors involves a natural temporal and practical ordering for the components. Managers must consider the demands of many legitimate internal and external stakeholders, minimally satisfying all and further satisfying the most salient. There are linkages of particular a_i to specific stakeholder groups. Technological standards and quality grading inform and regulate production by employees. Although quality maximization is often an excellent strategy, there is no universal, overarching ethical imperative to maximize overall quality. Rather, in the equations for both economic sectors, each component successively presents a distinctive set of demand related ethical issues.