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The purpose of this paper is to dissect the diffusion of the number of organizations that implemented multiple management systems (MSs), considering the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards (quality, environment and safety) in the South European countries: Italy, Portugal and Spain. In addition, based on the data collected, forecasting models were developed to assess at which extent the multiple certifications are expected to occur in each studied country.

Data concerning the evolution of the amount of multiple MSs in Italy, Portugal and Spain were collected for the period between 1999 and 2015. The behavior of the evolution of the number of MSs over the years was studied adopting both the Gompertz and the Logistic models. The results obtained with these two models were compared and analyzed to provide a forecast for the next years.

The diffusion throughout the years of the number of MSs presents an S-shaped behavior. The evolution of the amount of MSs in countries with a lower saturation level are properly fitted by the Gompertz model whereas the Logistic model fits more accurately when considering countries with a larger saturation level.

The data related to the early years are not available in some of the countries. To overcome this shortcoming missing data were extrapolated from the data set provided by the annual ISO survey. Additionally, the integration level attained by each company was not assessed and, on this regard and in the scope of this paper, an integrated management system is understood as implemented when organizations have multiple MSs implemented.

The results provide a cross-sectional portrayal of the diffusion of MSs certifications in the South European countries and enable a forecast for the trend in the next years.

This study aims for the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to analyze the diffusion of multiple MSs throughout the years.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the level of integration of management systems (IMS) over product and process innovation capabilities (IC), by considering the role of open innovation (OI) activities as a moderating effect of those relationships.

A longitudinal empirical study was performed on an existing Spanish panel database that contains information related to innovation, where 9,765 companies were selected for the panel analysis. A logit approach with random effects was considered.

The level of IMS positively influences process and product IC. Moreover, external cooperation, and using it to a high extent not only positively moderates the effects of the level of IMS over process IC, but also of process over product IC, where it becomes indispensable for its effect to be positive. Finally, investing in external knowledge is a positive moderator of the effects of the level of IMS over both: process and product IC.

This is one of the first studies on empirically finding evidence of the impact of the level of IMS on process and product IC, and of the moderating effect of performing OI activities in order to achieve higher process and product IC through the IMS.