SME's Implementing a Quality Management System- Risks and Opportunities

Abstract

Part of our daily lives, risk ceased to be just something that managers are desperate to alleviate if not eliminate. It is now rightfully considered a path to explore new opportunities. The last version of the ISO 9001, the 2015 edition, is asking from organization implementing it to determine the risk and opportunities associated with their main processes, the impact over relevant third parties and the context, both internal and external. With this duality as starting point, we have investigated among SME's implementing a quality management system what would they consider to be the risk and opportunities associated to this action. Our paper presents hereinafter the partial results of a wider study on Romanian SME's management, especially the findings related to what managers consider as risk or opportunity when implementing a quality management system.