A 21 st Century framework for quality management

Emerging trends such as globalisation, customer power and sophistication, social responsibility and environmental sustainability consciousness are creating new business challenges and market demands for organisations. In order for the business world to realise growth and sustainable success in this environment, many organisations changed the strategy they followed in the last three decades. The new strategies moved from being predominately product-focused, using process management and cost reduction, which used to be core functions to quality management, to more risk mitigation, revenue generation and reputational focused drivers. Hence, in the last twenty years the world of business has changed significantly, whereas the field of quality has not correspondingly changed in thinking or form. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the supposition that quality has become outdated over the last two decades. This paper will focus on the change that quality management as a discipline should undertake by proposing a quality stewardship and leadership (QSAL) framework for managing quality, under a new definition, namely, quality stewardship, into the future. In addition, this study will also include an empirical study which was undertaken to evaluate the support for the proposed framework.


INTRODUCTION
The common forming principles of quality in the past have always been ensuring that organisation remains competitive and demonstrates its "pursuit for excellence" (Kanji, 2007;Zairi, 2006;Schniederjans et al., 2006;Jabnoun and Sedrani, 2005).
The Conference Board of Quality Council advocates that in the last twenty years the world of business has changed significantly based on emerging trends such as globalisation, customer power and sophistication, social responsibility and environmental sustainability consciousness (Gutner and Adams, 2009).Whilst the changes in the business world were taking place, the field of quality management did not correspondingly change in thinking or form.Furthermore, quality and business priorities drifted apart causing the outputs for quality to become more obscured, resulting in enormous uncertainty in this profession.It fuelled insecurity amongst many quality *Corresponding author.E-mail: shalinis@dut.ac.za.Tel: (031) 3735159/082 975 7772.Fax: (031) 373 5337.professionals and reduced the number of young professionals embracing this discipline (Wood, 2008).As a result, the current perception is that the theory and practices of quality have become non-progressive, confused and out-dated.
Organisations in the 21 st century are responding to the changing global environment by introducing initiatives requiring new resources and systems which in many cases place a major strain on organisations already overloaded with costs and resource constraints.As a result, many organisations are struggling to proficiently and practically manage them.Subsequently, it is evident that there is a need for developing and implementing a strategy with an integrated framework to facilitate the evolution that is required of existing quality models in order to make them relevant for the needs of manufacturing organisations in the 21 st century.This paper aims to demonstrate the supposition that quality has become outdated over the last two decades.It focuses on the changes that quality management as a discipline should undertake by proposing a quality stewardship and leadership (QSAL) framework for managing quality under a new definition, namely, quality stewardship, into the future.Thereafter, the paper assesses the applicability of the above schematic framework to current practice in the FMCG related industry sector.

METHODOLOGY
This paper consists of two components, namely: 1.The development of the framework, the underlying theoretical groundings adopted in its development, key components and operation of framework, and advantages and disadvantages envisaged for the proposed framework.
2. An empirical research of a detailed questionnaire, examining views on the proposed framework for managing quality into the future.

Development of the framework
The use of frameworks is supported widely in literature as a means to simplify complex processes, entities or systems (Okumus, 2001;Olsen and Haslett, 2002).Clemson (1984) promulgates that in organisations, managers are always faced with matters which require their attention.Clemson (1984) declares that the actions taken by a manager, in all cases, are based on a framework that includes at least four elements, which are as follows: 1. Some image of a preferred state, this may be in a form of a goal or merely by a way of behaving by the system.2. Some image of the current state of the system.3. Some image of the "way the system works".4. A belief based on the three previous images, that the situation might be improved by a given type of management.
Using the points offered by Clemson (1984), the proposed framework for this research was developed into an image depicting the operation of the preferred state for the new scope for quality management.

Underlying theoretical grounding adopted in the development of the framework
The development of the proposed framework incorporated TQM, systems thinking and business excellence as the underlying theoretical grounding.Each of these theoretical groundings and the manner, in which they support the operation of the preferred state for the new scope for quality management, is detailed below.Gunasekaran and McGaughey (2003), Sharma and Kodali (2008), Vanichchinchai and Igel (2009) defined TQM as a management philosophy which supports the business practices of cost reduction, enhanced productivity, improved quality of the products/outputs, customer satisfaction, employee empowerment, and the measurement of results.Kotelnikov (2011) asserts that TQM refers to an integrated management approach to focus all functions and levels of an organisation on quality and continuous improvement.Furthermore, over the years, TQM has become very important for improving an organisation's process capabilities in order to achieve fitness of purpose and sustain competitive advantage.Thus, it was believed that the adoption of the TQM approach in this research supports quality management to bridge the gaps contributing to the present non-alignment to business challenges and market demands as highlighted above.
Systems thinking advocates focusing on a system as a whole, with interconnected parts (Jackson 2009).Ackoff and Emery (1972) reinforced the views that, a system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole, which loses its essential properties when it is taken apart.They rejected operations research which advocates the analytic way to solve problems that addresses complex system issues by dividing them into parts and evaluating each part separately.Furthermore, they felt that it was not possible to improve the performance of each part of a system separately because by so doing the integration of the system as a whole would be destroyed and the weakest part of a system will ultimately destroy the whole.Sherman (2010) supports this thinking and stated that by using systems thinking and focusing on the entire system, solutions which addressed as many problems as possible can be identified.Sherman (2010) stated that the positive effect of those solutions leverages improvements throughout the system or organisation and not merely pays attention to its individual parts or departments.The argument to use systems thinking for the development of the framework in this research comes from the propensity to regard organisations as organisms (Jackson, 2000), which, in order to operate effectively needs to have a purpose.Accordingly, organisations are made of highly interdependent parts that must work together to achieve the system"s overall aim.Hence, system thinking was incorporated into the development of the framework for this research.Historically, a common forming principle of quality management has been ensuring that the organisation remains competitive and demonstrates its "pursuit for excellence" (Jabnoun and Sedrani 2005;Schniederjans, et al., 2006;Zairi, 2006;Kanji, 2007).According to Kanji (2007), the first condition necessary to improve and ultimately to achieve organisational excellence, is to measure what drives the satisfaction of the key organisational stakeholders.For this, Kanji (2007), advocates that the first step is to develop and implement a system for performance measurement that represents the points of view of different stakeholders.Although, the immediate role of any performance measurement system is to check progress towards the established goals, such a system fulfils several other purposes in the organisation.Kanji (2007) suggested that the other main purposes of a performance measurement system can be synthesised as follows: 1. To identify major improvement opportunities.2. To achieve goal congruence and organisational alignment.3. To enhance accountability.4. To drive future resource allocation decisions.5. To communicate to each individual how he/she can contribute to the overall strategy and thus to encourage and reinforce certain behaviours and attitudes.
In view of the above, the framework proposed by this research portrayed a structure which was easily adopted to incorporate performance measurement and business excellence matrices and strategies.This could also be transformed into a dashboard to align with the requirements of "triple bottom line" (Rossouw, 2010).
Connecting to the underlying theoretical grounds, the framework illustrated that the new dynamic strategy and definition for quality management was developed as a holistic system made up of individual parts.It will also position quality management as a set of principles and practices that guides an organisation and interacts with stakeholders wherein business excellence demonstrates organisational outcomes and achievements.

Key components and operation of QSAL (quality stewardship and leadership) framework
The framework adopted the name "quality stewardship and leadership" and acronym QSAL.This framework encapsulated the following components: Inputs (risk, revenue and reputation), processes (productivity KPI"s, technical governance and environmental and social sustainability) and outputs (maximise value) for the proposed new scope for quality management.The process component of the QSAL framework was informed and reviewed on an ongoing basis as a result of business strategies, philosophies, plans which exist to meet prevailing business challenges and market demands.The schematic in (Figure 1) offers the intended structure of the proposed QSAL framework.
This shows the layout of the interaction of the components of the QSAL framework.Stewardship and leadership served as a point of departure for the operation of the QSAL framework.It was felt that the word "stewardship" as per Block (1996), can be described as a set of principles and practices that has the potential to make dramatic changes in governance systems by creating a strong sense of ownership and responsibility in organisations was found to be pertinent to the proposed future scope of quality management.
The word "stewardship" thus supported the proposed novel, dynamic strategy in this research which addressed issues such as global warming, business ethics, sustainable economies, ecology and reciprocity.The adoption of these issues was in accordance with Saco (2008).This also supported the thinking of Hitchcock and Willard (2002) who believed that the new role of quality in this century included being the watchword for sustainability and encompassed both social and environmental issues.
Leadership as a concept was included in the title because the review of related literature (Chan and Quazi, 2002;Sinn, 2002;Grover and Walker, 2003;Luria, 2008;Laohavichien et al., 2009;Barna, 2010) and development of the framework revealed that leadership played an important role in quality management.From Barna (2010), it was believed that the description of "stewardship" shareed a strong alignment with the concept of "servant leadership".Thus "stewardship" provided the matrices and strategies for managing the emerging trends; however, the accountability for execution remained with the operations employees.Similarly, with the concept of "servant leadership", the success of leaders can only be brought about by the support of the constituency or employees for which they are responsible.The "servant leadership" model forwards the philosophy that if the leader serves the needs of the employees, who then serves the needs of the customer, the result would be an affluent (most admired) organisation which will benefit all stakeholders.
The QSAL framework was designed using the underlying theoretical grounding described above.Thus, structurally, the framework followed a basic design depicting the operation of an integrated system comprising of inputs, a process and an output.The inputs, which can be viewed as the drivers for the process, are: Revenue growth through productivity; Risk mitigation through strong governance; and Building reputational equity by growing into new environmental and social spaces.These inputs are transformed and are reflected as various categories for operational business performance in the process component of the framework.
The process component of the framework was developed as categories which consisted of the common forming principles of TQM as emphasised by Jabnoun and Sedrani (2005), Schniederjans et al. (2006), Zairi (2006) and Kanji (2007).The categories were productivity key performance indicators (KPI"s), technical governance, and social and environmental sustainability.
Productivity KPI"s was chosen as the first category within the QSAL framework.This category built on the notion that organisations needed to be cogniscent of and improved in all areas to generate revenue growth and to stay in business.Traditionally, manufacturing organisations emphasised an internal-focus, where operational efficiency shaped organisational performance effectiveness (Gomes et al., 2006).In this environment, productivity KPI"s, namely, quality, cost, delivery, safety and morale (QCDSM) goals (Alvord, 2010) were the sole focus of manufacturing strategies.These goals provided the necessary alignment between business processes and customer requirements which in turn Moonsamy and Singh 11233 supported revenue growth.In the present environment, customer requirements have increased and diversified (Jochem, et al., 2010).Therefore, the alignment between business processes and customer requirements remained vital.Organisations are required to focus on the traditional productivity KPI"s manufacturing to ensure alignment with customer requirements, market demands and the organisation"s objectives to ultimately generate revenue growth.Hence, productivity KPI"s was adopted as the first key category within the QSAL framework.
The second category was chosen to illustrate the technical governance systems and processes that will be typically required for risk mitigation in the new scope of quality management.Within this category, the design of the first of five sub-categories, which consisted of managements systems, was informed by the work of Singh (2006).Singh (2006) was of the opinion that traditionally, many organisations operated management systems officially and unofficially and different departments of the organisation operated independently, as silos.However, she noted that as the need for optimisation and strategic thinking arose, more organisations were forced to progress towards business excellence.This prompted the need for departments to work more closely with each other and to find more innovative ways of doing business.One such way was to integrate management systems.Some of the advantages of integrating management systems highlighted by Singh (2006) included: Reducing and avoiding the large volumes of documentation generated to support these systems separately; would make maintaining and auditing these systems simpler and; would reduce resource loadings on organisations which are already overwhelmed with costs and resource constraints.It is logical from this review that this category adopted the integrated approach for management systems.Several management systems which were considered to provide opportunities for the future of quality management were listed under this category.Further management systems common to manufacturing organisations, were also incorporated.Thus, the management systems that were listed under this sub-category included the ISO 9001, ISO 22000, ISO 14001, SABS 1841 and NOSA (Health, Safety and Environment).
The second and third sub-categories within the second category consisted of policies, procedures and standards.These subcategories were designed to address new stakeholder needs such as an organisation"s policies, procedures and standards on corporate responsibility or environmental sustainability and were developed to provide local intelligence which could be understood and accepted in the court of public opinion.The fourth and fifth subcategories within this category were intended to provide a system for the identification and mitigation of business risks and casting a broader net on emerging trends.These governance outputs and cycles were incorporated in the QSAL framework to assist continuous improvement by increasing flexibility and adaptability in a complex and rapidly changing environment.Consequently, this category was wholly based on the focus of governance systems and processes and was entitled technical governance.It was evident from a review of the guidelines in the newly published ISO 26000 standards (ASQ/ANSI/ISO 26000:2010), that at present an organisation"s performance in relation to the society in which it operates and its impact on the environment had become a critical part of measuring its overall performance and its ability to continue operating effectively.Social responsibility entails actions beyond legal compliance and the recognition of obligations to others that are not legally binding.These obligations arise out of widely shared ethical and other values.The McKinsey (2009) report states that it is through similar perceived importance that environmental and social sustainability soared in recent years and has resulted in executives, investors, and regulators growing increasingly aware that such programs can mitigate corporate crises and build reputations.A recent survey of 766 CEOs of organisations who signed the United Nations Global Compact, an international network of organisations focused on the environment, labour and human rights issues, showed that 93% of the CEO"s believed environmental, social and corporate governance issues covered by the compact are important to their future success (Lacy et al., 2010).In contrast, a recent ASQ/Manpower survey of more than 1,000 quality professionals found that while 70% of respondents are familiar with their organisation"s social responsibility activities, only 28% viewed their organisation"s social responsibility efforts as being fully integrated into daily operations and decision making.Less than half (43%) responded that quality professionals are included in their organisation"s social responsibility efforts (ASQ and Manpower Professional, 2011).
Environmental and social sustainability was chosen as the third category in the process component of the QSAL framework, even though aspects of these trends were covered in the second category within governance programs.The first sub-category within this category, namely, environmental sustainability, detailed specific areas that were highlighted in related literature that will have major impact for organisations in the immediate future.The ISO 26000 standard was included under the social responsibility sub-category and not the management systems sub-category in the second category as this new standard, although similar to other ISO standards, is only a guideline that can help manage social responsibility issues in organisations and cannot be certified against (Bowers and West, 2011).Further, the King III Report, which officially came into effect on 1 March 2010, requires South African organisations to report annually on triple bottom line aspects (Rossouw, 2010) and was therefore, included in this category.
The last component of the QSAL framework was designed such that it described the outputs of the new scope of quality management which addressed current business needs and market demands.Wreder et al. (2009) assert that in the present business environment, organisations need not only satisfy their customers but also a number of other stakeholders and interested parties whose wants and expectations are often disparate, in conflict and subject to change.Hence, based on the multi-faceted needs of the various stakeholders, the term "maximum value" was selected as an overarching concept to represent the outputs of the QSAL framework.This term was based on the definition of "value", provided by Conti (2010), who maintains that it can mean economic value in the case of economic relations; it can be moral or spiritual value in the case of personal, non-economic human relations; it can be scientific or artistic value in the case of relations between man and nature or man-made objects.Notwithstanding that for an organisation to remain competitive, the word "value" will include profitable growth, excellence in execution and customer loyalty and retention (Gutner and Adams, 2009).In the context of the new scope of quality management, "maximising value" will also have a high weighting on the ability to achieve stakeholders" satisfaction.Thus, the purpose of the proposed QSAL can be summarised as the implementation of the anticipated new scope of quality management which hopes to mitigate risk, achieve revenue growth and build reputational equity by implementing and measuring productivity KPI"s, technical governance, and social and environmental sustainability in order to achieve customers", employers" and shareholders" (stakeholders) satisfaction within an organisation.

The advantages and disadvantages of the quality stewardship and leadership (QSAL) framework
The advantages and disadvantages of the QSAL were considered during the development of the framework.

Advantages of using the quality stewardship and leadership (QSAL) framework
The framework attempts to address the deficiencies that were highlighted in literature on the non-alignment between quality management, business challenges and market demands.Thus, organisations complying with the framework will operate in accordance to emerging trends which were identified from the literature, thereby giving them a competitive advantage.
The framework provided a comprehensive and holistic system with connective capability that integrates the various systems within a single framework.Therefore, it would be easier for an organisation to manage systems using this framework rather than managing them disparately.
Another advantage of the proposed framework is that it can be used as a tool for evaluating the quality management maturity of an organisation.The common approach to measures, standards and policies from the framework could enable or support meaningful benchmarking.
The framework will enable an integrated approach among various departments within organisations that deal with similar outputs, for example, corporate affairs, risk management, legal, to name a few.

Disadvantages of using the quality stewardship and leadership (QSAL) framework
A disadvantage that can be associated with the proposed QSAL framework is that it requires ongoing maintenance and updating in order to retain usefulness and relevance in a rapidly changing environment.This could imply a need for a dedicated resource.The main inference here is that without ongoing review the QSAL framework can, over a period of time, become outdated.
The proposed QSAL framework requires a significant shift in mindset.Based on the enormity of the change, the implementation of the proposed QSAL framework will require a comprehensive change management plan.Absence of leadership or proper change management can become an impediment in the successful implementation of the proposed QSAL framework.

Empirical research
The empirical research was undertaken across a sample of (FMCG) organisations and their suppliers.The objective of the empirical research was to gain an understanding of views on the QSAL framework within these organisations operating in South Africa.
All data collected from the participants were analysed using the SPSS version 17.0 and presented in the form of bar graphs, tables and figures.Mean score analysis, reliability analysis using the Cronbach alpha and hypothesis testing using chi-square p-values were used to analyse data.

Research limitations and implications
The empirical research was based on two multi-national organisations, their suppliers and selected FMCG organisations within

Moonsamy and Singh 11235
South Africa.There could be therefore some bias in the responses based on the number of respondents from each of the two organisations and their relationship with their suppliers.This can be avoided in future by having more organisations that are not directly involved with each other.

Sampling for survey questionnaire
The sample was categorised as follows: Participants from organisation one, organisation two, Head Office of Organisation one and two, suppliers of Organisation one and two and other FMCG organisation types in South Africa.This included beverage organisations, food processing and packaging organisations and their primary, secondary and tertiary suppliers.Thus, the sampling type, used for the survey, can be regarded as non-probability purposive sampling, as there was a deliberate choice of the target population (Steyn et al., 1994).

ANALYSIS OF DATA
A total of 127 survey questionnaires were distributed, of which 79 (62%) were returned.Using comments on response rates published by the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment, The University of Texas in Austin ( 2007), this response can be noted as very good.
The analysis of the demographical data for the empirical research are shown in Tables 1 to 5.

Views on proposed framework to manage quality into the future
The empirical research consisted of seven questions.The first five of the seven questions were based on Likert level responses and the last two questions were open ended.For the ease of statistical analysis, the scores on the Likert level type questions were converted to numeric values as follows: "Strongly agree" (5); "agree" (4); "unsure" (3); "disagree" (2); and, "strongly disagree" (1).Table 6 shows the views on QSAL framework to manage quality into the future displays the mean responses and Cronbach alpha for the Likert type questions.The overall mean score of 4.11 implies a high level of agreement for all questions.An examination of the mean scores for the individual questions confirmed a positive response with all results close to 4. The Cronbach alpha of 0.87 maintains a high reliability for the established levels.
The p-values for the questions from Table 6 indicated an overall fifty two percent of all instances with p-values <0.05.The variable formal QM program realised a pvalues of <0.05 on all instances; designation in organisation and organisation type displayed three pvalues <0.05; organisation size returned two p-values <0.05, and experience in organisation recorded all pvalues >0.05.The null hypothesis for the variables and questions with p-values<0.05 can be rejected.A reason for the significant relationships between the mentioned variables and questions with p-values <0.05 may be due to specific requirements and approaches adopted in the implementation of existing quality management programs within some organisations.It is also possible that some participants felt that their current quality management systems were already positioned with similar outputs as those proposed by the QSAL framework.Another reason could be that the differences of opinions on the proposed QSAL framework was simply due to limited understanding of the detail of the proposed framework by participants in this research.Figure 2, displays a breakdown of the responses per question.Figure 2, the first three questions 1, 2 and 3 showed over eighty percent agreement on the Likert level.For question 1, eighty five percent of the participants in the survey "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that the new evolution and proposed framework will better position quality management into the future.Question 2 displayed very similar results to question 1, namely, that there was an eighty six percent overall agreement that the new evolution proposed by this research will be supported by their organisations.The third question (question 3) recorded eighty nine percent "agree" or "strongly agree" scores suggesting that the proposed framework will be beneficial to the participant organisation.The breakdown per question, 1-3, further confirms a positive response by the majority of the participants in this research to the QSAL framework.Questions 4 and 5 returned a lower percentage of agreement scores in comparison to the first three questions in this category.These questions displayed a wider distribution of responses on the Likert level.Question 4 produced seventy percent as "agree" or "strongly agree".This question also returned twenty percent "unsure" and eight percent "disagree" responses.Based on the nature of question 4, which requested the participants" view on whether the proposed framework will position quality at a higher level within their organisation, it is plausible that the lower scores could be due to limited understanding of the detail of the framework by the participants.
Question 5, though returning a mean score of 3.99 on the Likert level, reflected the least percentage of agreement in responses.This question only received twenty two percent "agree" responses.The majority of the responses were "unsure" at fifty four percent.Also, there was a twenty three percent response on "disagree".The reasons for these low levels of responses for question 5 could be similar to the previous question (question 4), that the high percent of "unsure" responses could be due to limited understanding of the detail of the framework.Other reasons could be that the low level scores are due to specific requirements and approaches adopted in the implementation of existing quality management programs within some organisations.It is possible that some participants felt that their current quality management systems were already positioned with similar outputs as the QSAL framework, whilst others could have strategies which deliberately do not encompass them.
From an evaluation of the variable position in the organisations (Table 7), there were no major differences noticeable.There was a single response at level 2 which expressed disagree-ment whilst there were some participants who responded with high levels of agreement and medium levels consistently for all questions.
The variable formal QMP (Table 8) returned a higher average mean value for all responses that indicated an organisation-wide QMP in compareson to a QMP implemented in some parts of the organisation.The assumption for this question was that if an organisation had a formal QMP, it would possess mature quality processes.
Hence, there was a view that their responses would be an informed perspective.
Figure 3 provides a breakdown of responses for the various organisation types.There was a high degree of agreement to the questions on the framework by all organisation types, namely, question 2, ninety one percent; question 3 eighty six percent and question 5, seventy three percent.The only differences were by the organisation types where the responses for the head office, organisation one and organisation two were slightly higher than that of the supplier organisation and other FMCG organisations.Thus, the possible reasons for these differences are that which were already mentioned above, which may be due to specific requirements and approaches adopted in the implementation of existing quality management programs within some organisations.It is also possible that some participants felt their current quality management systems were already positioned with similar outputs as those proposed by the QSAL framework.One of the objectives of this research was to develop a framework with an integrative approach which would support organisations in implementing quality management, under the new definition of quality stewardship, into the future.Majority of results demonstrated excellent support towards achieving this.The significant differences noted in the hypothesis tests were largely contributed by the variable formal QMP.The differences revealed that organisations which implemented organisation-wide QMP were more in agreement with the QSAL framework than those who did not implement QMP.It is hoped that the questions that did not achieve high levels of agreement were due to limited knowledge and understanding of the QSAL framework.Therefore, with an improved understanding of the QSAL framework, these levels of agreement can improve.

Question 6 and 7: Open ended questions
For question C3.6 and C3.7, responses were assessed by counting the number of responses from the population making similar comments.(Figure 4) of the framework consisted of the main themes: That the framework provided a high business focus, holistic and structured approach.Other comments in favour of the framework was its emphasis on culture, integrated approach, simplicity, focus on customer needs and environment, to list a few.These responses align with the advantages provided above in the theoretical discussion on the QSAL framework.The advantages envisaged were that the framework will provide a "comprehensive", "holistic" system with excellent "connective capability" pulling together the various disparate systems within FMCG type organisations in South Africa.In addition, the QSAL framework will address the non-alignment between quality management, current business challenges and market demands created by emerging trends and stakeholder requirements.

b) Disadvantages
Key responses on the disadvantages of the model (Figure 5), included economic viability, the impact of social responsibility, the complexity which could be cumbersome to adopt and manage in the absence of competent people, too many areas under leadership and the framework will not be suited to all businesses.
The views expressed by the participants on economic viability and the complexity which could be cumbersome to adopt and manage in the absence of competent employees are valid, mainly in the development of new systems for the QSAL framework and in the acquisition of additional resources.However, once the systems are developed and the QSAL framework and resources are in place, the economic viability and maintenance requirements will change positively as a result of an effectively designed and implemented framework.This will out-weigh the implementation costs.Support for this contention can be found in Stevenson (2002), Gitlow et al. (2005) and Singh (2006).Responses that, there were too many areas under leadership suggested that the QSAL framework may seem wide in scope.It is hoped that this comment will be viewed more positively once the framework is implemented, as the key objective of this research is to focus on the change that quality management as a discipline should undertake and the development of leadership, which should be adopted to achieve this.
The comments on the impact of social responsibility can perhaps be attributed to a lack of knowledge and infancy of this trend.Responses that, the QSAL framework will not be suited to all businesses can be attributed to participants" lack of knowledge that the QSAL should not be seen as prescriptive; it merely provides a guideline for the new scope proposed for quality management.In addition, the QSAL framework was designed specifically for the FMCG industry.However, the framework should not be seen as limited only to this type of industry but with a potential to be adapted for other industries, as its foundation is developed from generic international standards.

Question 7: What aspects would you recommend for change in this framework?
Question 7 elicited changes that the participants felt were necessary to the framework.It is evident from Figure 6 that there were very little responses to this question.The top two responses was provided by three participants each, the next three responses comprised of two participants each and the last seven responses by a single participant.The first response suggested the inclusion of capacity building, competency and skills in the baseline of the framework.This view, although not made explicit in the QSAL framework, is implicit in the foundation that the framework will operate on, namely, in business strategies, philosophies, plans which exist to meet prevailing business challenges and market demands.Also, capacity building, competency and skills will be addressed as they are core requirements of the various listed management systems, such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, within the QSAL framework.
The second response mentioned that references to sales, marketing and administration were absent, thus implying that these outputs needed to be included in the framework.It can be perceived that this response was due to no visible references to the terms sales, marketing and administration in the framework.However, the discourse above, which provides a detailed review of the design, underlying philosophies and operations of the QSAL framework illustrates the relationship with these outputs in a more comprehensive manner.
The points made on KPI"s and measurement, the "what" versus the "how", and social responsibility are issues that will hopefully become apparent as part of implementation.This could perhaps provide an opportunity for future research.
All of the other responses, as mentioned, are single comments and can be inferred as been made because of a lack of knowledge and understanding of the intended operations of the framework.

CONCLUSIONS
The QSAL framework, though still focusing on the existing fundamentals of quality management, takes a much broader business outlook which encompasses elements such as social corporate responsibility, environmental sustainability and globalisation, amongst the other emerging trends.From the comments above, it can be inferred that the proposed QSAL framework has a high degree of acceptance from the participants.In reviewing the responses and taking the current state of quality management into consideration, it can be assumed that by providing further clarity on the objectives, strategy and operation of the proposed framework, the level of its acceptance should increase further.
In question 6, the responses to advantages

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Views on proposed framework to manage quality into the future.

Table 1 .
Sample size per organisation type.

Table 2 .
Position in organisation.

Table 3 .
Experience in position.

Table 4 .
Size of organisation.

Table 6 .
Views on QSAL Framework to manage quality into the future.

Table 7 .
Question 3 position in organisation.