Shedding more light on the impacts of quality certified systems in small service enterprises: A multidimensional analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the small enterprises within the service sector that have adopted certified quality systems, focusing on the motives that have encouraged these enterprises to do so and the organizational impacts such adoptions have had. The results highlight the importance that these enterprises grant to certified quality systems as a strategic tool that can be used in a proactive way to contend with market changes and adverse economic situations, providing them commercial benefits in particular. These results can help managers of small service enterprises analyse the advantage or disadvantage of the position in the market that they can achieve when they decide to implement certified quality systems. This paper provides evidence of how the motives behind small service enterprises’ implementation of quality systems differ from those found by research papers, focused on other types of service and industrial enterprises.