هزینه مدل کیفیت و فرآیند: بهبود ابزار حسابداری برای دستیابی به کارایی محیطی بالاتر Cost of quality and process model: improving accounting tools for attaining higher environmental efficiency

1. Introduction A narrow view of environmental issues led to considering them as a battle between business and environmental interests with ensuing power struggles and litigation (Porter & van der Linde, 1995) and resulting in heavy cost for the interested parties, society, and the environment. Different approaches have been tried to measure these costs and discuss how best to reduce them. According to the economic approach of the environment, the choice of disposing waste and remedying the environmental pollution it causes needs to be economically efficient. While there is broad consensus on this basic condition, it is not clear as to which costs should be included, how they would have to be measured (Curkovic et al., 2008), whether certain costs are to be preferred over others, and lastly, what time horizon should be chosen in order to arrive at this objective. Consequently, most economic activities result in untreated pollution, creating deferred economic cost (ecological debt). Quality Management (QM) has become a mainstream managerial approach for improving products, services, and business processes in order to generate superior customer satisfaction and pursue competitive advantage (Dahlgaard-Park, 2015). This advantage is achieved by the methodical reduction of dissatisfactions, waste and resulting costs. Some researchers have attempted to translate the notion of cost of quality, derived from quality management, to measure the costs associated with the environmental management of companies. These articles describe an environmental management mainly focused on curative actions while quality management considers that preventive actions are more economically efficient. These approaches have in common their focus on business accounting of an individual entity. Their economic analysis is limited to a single link (polluting company to their customers). Yet this link is part of a much more complex process, and not including upstream pollution “suppliers” that degrade natural environments, and the stakeholders and downstream society that suffer from this degradation. This article seeks to clarify the efficiency criteria for disposing waste by using the concept of cost of quality (CQ) and process model methodology, derived from quality management. The article’s findings, based on a literature review and on a pollution cost analysis for pig farming activities, describe inefficient outcomes from environmental and stakeholder perspectives. It is therefore suggested, with the help of the process model and cost of quality concept, to overcome this individualistic perspective with its negative results for all stakeholders concerned and the environment by focusing the actors on reducing the costs of environmental quality of the whole process concerned and by investing on preventive actions.