Special issue of the TQM Journal: “Integrated Management Systems”

Citation

Karapetrovic, S. (2010), "Special issue of the TQM Journal: “Integrated Management Systems”", The TQM Journal, Vol. 22 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/tqm.2010.10622faa.001

Special issue of the TQM Journal: “Integrated Management Systems”

Article Type: Guest editorial From: The TQM Journal, Volume 22, Issue 6

Two years ago, we issued the following Call for Papers for this special issue:

“Despite the enormous importance of various management system standards (MSSs) in the world today, demonstrated by their use in more than a million organizations and many other significant impact indicators, the research on the application of multiple such standards and the integration of the corresponding systems is still in short supply. Additionally illustrating the need for research in this area is the fact that the related practice is rapidly evolving, with new MSSs being constantly developed and implemented. Within the span of less than six months in 2008, for instance, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has announced the development of two MSSs covering the brand-new areas of road safety and energy management and the publication of The Integrated Use of Management System Standards handbook (see www.iso.org).

The overall topic of research into these issues has been commonly branded as either the “Integration of (standardized) management systems”, referring to the integration process, or the “Integrated management system(s)”, denoting its output. Regardless of what particular term is used to define this research (luckily the acronym “IMS” covers both and hence will be used here), the current literature on it seems to be rather scattered in a number of quality, environmental, safety and other similarly-focused management or technical publications, including The TQM Magazine/The TQM Journal, but can also be found in general management and industry-specific journals, conference proceedings and books.

Therefore, the aim of this special issue of The TQM Journal is to collect and publish a comprehensive account of the leading-edge research regarding the theory and practice of IMS, perhaps for the first time in a single journal issue. Research addressing or studying the implementation of multiple MSSs, such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001/CSA Z1000/ANSI Z10, ISO 27001, ISO 28000 and SA 8000, and the integration of the corresponding systems, for example the ones for quality, environmental, safety, security and responsibility management, is particularly sought after.

Papers appearing in this issue can have a theoretical focus, e.g. providing multiple MSSs implementation and/or IMS models and methodologies, an empirical orientation, e.g. examining the “how, where, when, why, who and what” of the past, present or future such implementations and integrations, or both. Theoretical pieces, review articles, case studies, surveys and other empirical inquiries are all welcome”.

In the past two years, the situation regarding IMS research, as described in the first two paragraphs of the Call, has probably not changed much. Today, however, this special issue is available and should not only contribute to the IMS research in general, but also meet the goals set in the third paragraph of the Call. In addition, the seven papers contained in the issue together hopefully represent an “integrated” balance of the foci and the types of work welcomed in the last paragraph of the Call and by The TQM Journal readers.

I would like to thank the authors who expressed interest to send and/or submitted their papers for the issue, the reviewers, Dr Alex Douglas, the editor of The TQM Journal, as well as Ms Lucy Sootheran and the Emerald staff.

Stanislav Karapetrovic