Research of management systems - Essay Example

However systems exist in all organization regardless of their acknowledgement in any form of description; similarly designs of process workflows are there even if they have not been dictated through a flow chart etc. This is especially true in smaller organizations where rules and conventions are followed without strict following of any dictated procedures. The multiplicity of styles of administration and autonomous best practices has come to be regarded as unwieldy for business on a communal level and there is now consensus that best practices should be standardised.

The noblest organization that prescribes both generic and specific industrial practice standards is the International Standards Organization (ISO). ISO’s standard 9001:2000 defines a management system as ‘a set of interrelated or interacting elements to establish policy and objectives and to achieve those objectives’. The ISO 9000:2000 is used as the basis for drafting other standards; unfortunately there is a tendency among novice administrators to use a standard to design management systems.

It should be stressed here that these standards define elements to be included in the design of a system of management in order for it to be compatible with an assessment operation. Characterization The need for systemization arises because of the plethora of requirements for reputable businesses these days. These requirements include being profitable, being competitive, aiming for horizontal expansion, adaptability, improvement and the incorporation of leading technologies. The concept of system of management is in reality a theory of how things are to be done rather than a description of the governance style and processes of an enterprise.

Some generic objectives thought to be common to all corporate management systems include: Pursuit of business goals Improvement in understanding of ongoing processes and better handling of change Dissemination of information Compliance with laws, regulations and standards Betterment of practices Consistency Effective Prioritizing And adaptation to change It could be argued that objective(s) should be added to the aforementioned list to have a point of reference for the other elements. But while all systems have some kind of orientation, not all have an objective.

The Common Element - Improvement Another commonality of all systems of management is that they direct towards improvement. Not degrading in a changing environment is considered improvement in the philosophical sense. Even when corporations terminate or cut down development or growth programs, it is for a larger good. The only situation where a corporation could be said to be not pursuing progress is when it designs to inflict self-harm for no benefit of a parent entity or its shareholders. By referring to a ‘management system’, which as mentioned earlier is a manual of how things should be done’, as a system, the perceived purpose is mistook for a set of policies and processes rather than an enabler of progress.

All of ISO’s standards are based on the notion of improvement. Keeping these facts in mind, a concept of the basis for management systems was proposed called the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. It was originally proposed by the pioneering statistician Walter Shewhart in the 1930s and elaborated effectively later on by the famous authority on quality assurance, Edwards Deming. The cycle is characterized by the following components: Planning to incorporate