Management systems: integration or addition?

Abstract

Purpose-In the past few years, management systems implementation and certification has become a common practice among different types of organizations. In this context, quality management systems certification, according to the ISO 9001 standard is in the spotlight, due to over than 1.000.000 certified organizations by the end of 2009. Quality management systems can be integrated with an increasing variety of other subsystems implemented according to other standards, including environmental systems, health and safety, social responsibility, R&D, risk, or human resources, and subsystems raised from specific standards designed for specific activity sectors (HACCP, automotive or aeronautics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and software). Due to this evolution, careful attention should be taken on how these different subsystems have been and should be articulated, harmonized and integrated. Thus, this paper intends to approach different strategies to achieve integration, with several levels of intensity, depth and authenticity between the different subsystems, and report some final recommendations related with good practices assuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the integration process. Design/methodology/approach-A case study methodology has supported this research. Three case studies were conducted on Portuguese companies that have an integrated quality, environmental and safety management system. Findings-If the companies' strategy is to implement more than one management system, there is a clear advantage of doing it supported on an integrated approach, avoiding the development of organizational "islands" related to each subsystem. This organizational "archipelago" structure is completely far way from any global optimized solution, based on a holistic perspective. Originality/value-Based on the conclusions that we were able to find out, this paper is an important contribution to the integrated management systems research area, because it states different integration approaches and levels of integration and what are the features that characterize each one of those approaches and levels.

An integrated information system to support supply chain management & performance in SMEs

“…138 SMEs in Malaysia Inter-organizational relationships were affecting Malaysian SMEs' decision to adopt e-business in the supply chain The findings of both the contingency and configuration approach indicated that supply chain integration was related to both operational and business performance Söderberg and Bengtsson (2010) 15 SMEs in Sweden The results indicate that there is a strong relationship between SCM maturity and SC performance in SMEs and some relationships between SCM maturity and financial performance Tumaini and Zheng (2011) 229 SMEs in Tanzanian The study found that SMEs still face obstacles like knowledge, financial resources and technology IT integration is an important need for SMEs because IT integration will produce precise information that can improve firm efficiency, customer satisfaction, and firm productivity (Volkoff, Strong & Elmes, 2005;Berente, Vandenbosch & Aubert, 2009;Sampaio, Saraiva & Domingues, 2012;Francalanci & Morabito, 2008;Yen-Teoh & Pan, 2009;Simon & Petnji-Yaya, 2012). Thus, the more integrated the information system, the better the firm performance.…”

An analysis of the perceived difficulties arising during the process of integrating management systems

“…Finally, previous studies show that all these internal difficulties are reliant on both certain strategic decisions made during the design of the new management system and endogenous characteristics of the firm (Jonker & Klaver, 1998;Zutshi & Sohal, 2005;Asif et al, 2009;Sampaio, Saraiva & Domingues, 2012;Bernardo, Casadesus, Karapetrovic, & Heras, 2012b).…”

Seeing the Immaterial: A New Instrument for Evaluating Integrated Management Systems’ Maturity

“…[25] identifies three levels of integration: not integrated, partially integrated, and fully integrated, while the authors of References [28,29] studied whether the degree of integration is influenced by the difficulties of implementation (from standards, organization, resources, consultants, certification bodies) or by the implementation order of the component standards. The authors of [30] mention the integration steps proposed by British Standards Institution-BSI (Combined-Integratable-Integrating-Integrated) and refer in the empirical study to five levels of integration. The authors of Reference [31] support the three levels of integration, places integration at the level of managerial processes, and notes that obtaining a higher degree of integration is more difficult for large companies.…”