PAULO SAMPAIO University of Minho, School of Engineering, Systems and Production Department Campus Gualtar 4710-057 Braga, Portugal paulosampaio@dps.uminho.pt
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Summary According to the last available ISO survey, in December 2009 there were 1.065.785 issued ISO 9001 certificates, thus reflecting the importance of ISO 9001 certification worldwide, and approximately 223.149 ISO 14001 issued certificates. In the line of my previous publications, this paper presents a further set of statistical analyses conducted over ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 available data, providing some key results, which try to answer important questions regarding quality and environmental management systems certification in several countries. Such results provide an additional important contribution to the study of management systems diffusion/evolution, aimed at providing fact-based insights into, among other, the following issues: • Which are the countries leading quality and environmental management system certification? • Which are the countries that present highest growth rates between 2008 and 2009? • What has been the evolution of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certification in the different countries in the past few years? • What are market future perspectives regarding certification? Keywords: Management Systems, Certification, Standards.
1. INTRODUCTION A management system can be defined as a set of interrelated organizational processes which use different resources to achieve the objectives specified by the organization. Management systems therefore relate to planning, carrying out, controlling and improving various activities in an organization, by itself, and with regard to it stakeholders, on how the company is performing both in the short and long term. According to Karapetrovic et al. [1], management systems are thus based on the basic principles of systematization and formalization duties. A management system implementation does not require a certain level of organization performance or the achievement of a predetermined result. Rather, it establishes the need to systematize and formalize a whole series of organizational processes in a set of procedures which are related to different areas of business management. Implementation of a management system means that the organization activities, which that particular standard attempts to regulate, are systematized and formalized. Due to this fact, standards are very often criticized for a tendency towards bureaucratization and excessive rigidity [2], and the variety of intra-organizational silos that they may create, according to each company subsystem.