Sandra M. Castillo-Rojas
Department of Business Management & Product Design, University of Girona, Spain
Martí Casadesús
Department of Business Management & Product Design, University of Girona, Spain
Stanislav Karapetrovic
Department of Mechanical Engineer, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Iñaki Heras
Department of Mechanical Engineer, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Irene Martín
Department of Mechanical Engineer, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
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Published in: 11th QMOD Conference. Quality Management and Organizational Development Attaining Sustainability From Organizational Excellence to SustainAble Excellence; 20-22 August; 2008 in Helsingborg; Sweden
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 33:76, p. 917-925
Published: 2008-12-09
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
Purpose: The aim of this research is to respond; from an empirical point of view; to the next question: “Does management systems based on standards hinder innovation processes?”.
Methodology: In order to achieve this objective; an empirical work with the participation of 249 companies; in the framework of a research project called “Integrated Management Systems (IMS) in the Spanish companies” (SEJ2006-00682/ECON financed by the Ministry of Science and Technology within the aid program for R+D project) carried out from January to April 2006; is presented in this paper.
Findings: Principal findings of the survey of 249 Spanish organizations registered to both the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards which was illustrated here are: Managers and people involved in standardized management systems gave less importance to the statement that standards hinder innovation processes; although not with a statistically-significant difference compared to the other types of managers who responded to the survey. The importance given to the sentence “MSSs hinder innovation” decreased as more MSSs were considered for implementation in the future.
Originality/value: The majority of the work on innovation and quality management systems available in the current literature is based on the framework of Total Quality Management. In difference; the empirical analysis illustrated in this paper is focused on the various characteristics of standardized management systems; for example their current and future application and integration.
