Integrated management systems: A model for maturity assessment

Maturity models are adopted to minimise our complexity perception over a truly complex phenomenon. In this sense, maturity models are tools that enable the assessment of the most relevant variables that impact on the outputs of a specific system. Ideally a maturity model should provide information concerning the qualitative and quantitative relationships between variables and how they affect the latent variable, that is, the maturity level. Management systems (MSs) are implemented worldwide and by an increasing number of companies. Integrated management systems (IMSs) consider the implementation of one or several MSs usually coexisting with the quality management subsystem (QMS). It is intended in this chapter to report a model based on two components that enables the assessment of the IMS maturity, considering the key process agents (KPAs) identified through a systematic literature review and the results collected from two surveys.

This work has been funded by the Portuguese Government, namely, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in the scope of the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0319/2014. The authors also thank and acknowledge the support received from the company CemPalavras Comunicação Empresarial ltd in the diffusion of the online questionnaire. In addition, the authors would like to thank the companies that kindly answered the questionnaires. Pedro Domingues benefited from financial support through the FCT post-doc grant nº SFRH/BPD/103322/2014.