A Study on the Emergence and Resilience of Integrated Management Systems in Organizations with an Industrial Profile in Romania

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the specific elements regarding emergence and resilience in implementing integrated management systems (IMSs) in organizations with an industrial profile in Romania. The purpose of the research was to carry out an extensive study in the industrial field to identify key elements in the implementation of IMSs, considering the identification and analysis of those elements that can generate risks (emerging elements) as well as the identification and analysis of components that can be used to intervene quickly in the event of the manifestation of risks and that may produce unexpected disturbances (resilient management). A quantitative survey distributed to 147 managers of an industrial organization that has a minimum of two integrated management systems was used for data collection. The present study highlights the opinions of the managers from Romanian industrial enterprises regarding the elements that contribute when implementing an integrated management system. For this purpose, the survey focused on the following main topics: the advantages achieved from the integration, the internal and external barriers encountered, the strategies followed for integration, the risks that occurred, some of the internal and external performance indicators (KPIs) that guide the organization, the elements that are not susceptible to integration, the integration model used, the audit typology, the documents that are needed and the main aspects improved after implementing the integrated management system. The information obtained from the study outlined several themes that management should consider in order to obtain a framework for integration guidance.

1. Introduction

An integrated management system (IMS) is a distinct collection of interconnected processes that share a common pool of human, informational, material, infrastructural, and financial resources. This system is designed to accomplish multiple objectives intended to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders [1,2,3,4]. Integration connects all organizational processes into a cohesive system, allowing it to operate as a unified entity [1,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12].

IMS integration is a concern at both global and national levels, as it impacts numerous organizations worldwide, particularly those operating in dynamic and turbulent contexts. Many of these organizations carry out their activities at national and international levels or collaborate with various international partners.

In addition to challenges, industrial organizations also face turbulent contexts that require additional attention to the emergence of new emerging risks, due to the changes determined by the emergence of Industry 4.0 technologies, and the need for a resilient management approach from the top management to counter these disruptions of the technical–socio-economic environment and to ensure the continuity of the processes and implicitly of the management systems implemented within the organization [13,14].

1.1. Resilience

As defined by Gunderson (2000) [15], and Cumming et al. (2005) [16], the concept of resilience is related to the ability of an element or system to return to a stable state after unforeseen turbulence, as well as to adapt to new risk environments [17,18] or the ability to adapt and strengthen in the face of challenge, trauma or stress [19]. Resilience is described by Ponomarov and Holcomb (2009) [20] as a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional concept with diverse applicability, considering a wide array of issues, from the physical properties of materials to the managerial supply chain in organizations. The term resilience was first used in the field of ecology through the work of Holling (1973, 2001) [21,22], and later through the work of Walker et al. (2002, 2004) [23,24], being then used globally in the academic field [25,26,27,28,29]. Organizational resilience is the capacity of an organization to effectively confront complex and challenging situations while adapting to the necessary changes. Resilience is not a series of processes and an applied methodology is a different approach based on different assumptions and a radically different system model that should consider the fluctuations of the environment in which it operates [30]. Related to resilience, the concept of risk should be taken into account, which, when manifested, can affect business results, and this implies risk-based thinking, knowledge of the company’s internal and external problems, the requirements of stakeholders for the organization’s products, and services, such as the complexity of the processes in the organization [31,32]. Organizational resilience mechanisms are represented by flexibility and redundancy [33], responsiveness, agility, medium and long-term vision of the management chain [27] and collaboration [34].

Burnard and Bhamra (2019) [18] suggest a resilience-to-disruption approach to enable an organization to adapt to new, emerging risk environments. Balugani et al. (2020) [35] consider that sustainability is essential in business and consider it a component of resilience, and studies by Settembre-Blundo et al. (2021) [36] explored the interrelationship between resilience and sustainability.

1.2. Emergence

The term emergence, as written by Lopez-Ruiz et al. (1995) [37], was used by the English philosopher G.H. Lewes more than 100 years ago. Emergence is defined figuratively by Madsen and Servais (1997) [38] as a “birth” of something completely new. In the domain of biology, the term has been defined as the emergence of a new organ or the appearance of new higher-order properties [39,40], and in the industry, it refers to the emergence of new market requirements and product development of intelligence [41].

In the same logic, Moumen and Romero (2017) [42] make an analogy with what happens when a new model of integration of processes and management systems appears to manage all the requirements of the standards subject to integration, and this approach is considered an emerging model. Emergence as stated by Santamaría-Bonfil et al. (2017) [43] has a significant role in the implementation of IMSs, bringing both benefits and challenges in risk management and the prompt identification of emerging risks will yield some benefits to the organization.

To leverage the positive impact of emergence in IMSs, the organization should foster a culture of innovation, embrace a holistic perspective, and encourage communication and collaboration across departments and teams. Xu et al. (2018) [14] conducted a study on innovation and the positive role of emergence. The study was founded on the integration of recently emerging technologies with new disciplines such as cyber–physical systems, the internet of things, cloud computing, industrial integration, enterprise architecture, business process management, industrial information integration, etc.

2. Research Methodology

2.1. Methodology

Research methodology use rules, principles, tools, methods, and techniques for gathering information and know-how that should be followed during the research process to produce emerging and resilient knowledge [44].

The research consisted of the systemic examination and analysis of the specialized literature from a global level on the emergent and resilient factors encountered in the implementation of several management systems and based on the results of the studies, a questionnaire was created to be able to obtain conclusive data from the organizations with an industrial profile from Romania regarding the implementation of IMSs. The research was conducted on organizations operating in the industrial sector that implemented and integrated a minimum of two management systems.

The questionnaire was made with closed [45], mixed [46], and open [45,47] questions to be an attractive questionnaire for the respondents to extract valuable information such as the advantages, disadvantages, barriers, strategies, opportunities, control factors, and risks arising from IMS implementation.

The survey questions were designed with specific objectives and hypotheses, incorporating a list of variables and distinct questions [48]. Additionally, certain technical aspects of the study were considered [49]. The questions in the survey were decided according to the objective of the proposed theme and other studies from other countries of the researchers were taken into account [50,51,52,53,54].

An aspect that was fulfilled in the realization of the questionnaire, supported by [55,56,57,58], was related to the factor of control, i.e., validation of the questionnaire by a group of experts before being tested on a small group of respondents.

All questionnaire validations studied and supported by several researchers were taken into account, such as the face validity of the questionnaire produced by Gobbens and Uchmanowicz (2021) [59], the construct validity of McDowell (2006) [60], the content validity of Taber (2018) [61] and the criteria validity [59,60,61].

To make the collection of qualitative and quantitative information more efficient, with the help of the questionnaire, researchers [62,63,64,65,66] support the use of the mixed method, that is, after the questionnaire was sent, the respondent was contacted for an interview courtesy, activities that increase the chances of receiving a response to the questionnaire sent.

To avoid the problems of non-responses, all the researchers’ studies were thoroughly analyzed [49,51,54,58,62,63,64,65,66] and it was decided that the most effective approach is to first reach out to the respondents to build a rapport, explain the purpose of the study, and outline the time commitment involved. If the respondent (or a subordinate) agrees to participate, they are asked for an email address to receive the survey.

Although several researchers and methods of obtaining information from respondents were consulted, certain limitations (risks) encountered in the present research are not necessarily related to the researcher or the research method used [67,68,69].

The organizations that participated in the study were divided according to size depending on the number of employees, as follows: a number of 30–100 employees was considered a small organization, representing 20.4% of the respondents; a number of 100–500 employees was considered a medium-sized organization, representing 84.57% of the respondents; a number of >500 employees was considered a large organization, representing 22.4% of respondents.

2.2. Data Collection

Researchers Guest et al. (2006) [70], Mason (2010) [71], and Marshall (2013) [72] argue that in a market/country where respondents are relatively homogenous, any sample size greater than 30 respondents requires a thorough justification. Regarding the upper limits of the sample size, Sandelowski (1995) [73] argues that a sample of considerable size does not allow for a deep, case-oriented analysis and this is the rationale of qualitative research.

In the present research, the applications of the questionnaire and the interview are the only methods of gathering information to obtain conclusive results, due to the challenges in gaining access, through other methods, to the information necessary to achieve the proposed goal.

For this research, 837 organizations that implemented a minimum of two integrated management systems (quality—environment and health and safety at work; environment—health, and job security) were considered. These things were verified in the first phase by examining the information found on the organization’s official website, after which the managers responsible for quality were contacted by phone, and in other situations, visits were made to their headquarters. Of the 837 organizations that were contacted, 147 organizations responded to the questionnaire, of which 17 questionnaires were completed at the organizations’ headquarters as a result of a direct interview, and 2 questionnaires were completed as a result of a telephone interview. The use of the telephone interview was reduced due to the complexity of the questionnaire and the required response time of approximately 30–40 min/questionnaire. The data were collected between 23 March 2022 and 25 February 2023.

The response rate was 17.56%, with the low percentage being due to the reluctance of organizations to provide information about IMS implementation and the policies of corporations unwilling to disclose any information at all, as the data are considered confidential.

Comparing the percentage obtained with the research of Lee and Lings (2008) [50], Bell et al. (2022) [53], and De Vaus (2013) [52] where a response rate of 20% was obtained, which was considered a very good rate, and other research by Marshall et al. (2013) [72] having a rate below 10% [50,52,53], it can be considered that the response rate obtained in the present research is good.

After analyzing the recommendations of researchers [50,52,53,70,71,72,73,74,75], it was considered that 147 questionnaires are sufficient for a qualitative and quantitative analysis, which has a level of confidence whose results can be extended to the level of the industrial field. The content of the survey is given in Appendix A.

3. Results

According to the official data of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), in Romania, the most used standards for the certification of management systems are ISO 9001:2015 [76] with 11,886 certifications, ISO 14001:2015 [77] with 6174 certifications and ISO 45001:2018 [78] with 3481 certifications.

The industrial organizations that participated in the research were classified into three categories according to the number of employees, as shown in

Table 1. Classification of organizations.

Number of Employees
30–100	100–500	>500
31	83	33

.

The application of the survey elicited answers that were statistically analyzed.

3.1. Indicators of Knowledge of the Standards with Which Romanian Organizations Are Certified

Knowledge indicators of the most important standards highlight the emergence and resilience of organizations to adapt to new global changes, new technologies, and a sustainable future. The implementation of ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001:2018 standards, as well as other combinations, will help the company to develop, thus contributing to the increase in product quality, decrease in environmental pollution and increase in the safety and health of workers.

This question provides important data to identify the most used standards in Romania, and the combination in Figure 1 indicates this and supports Pareto’s 80/20 principle, i.e., the combination of ISO 9001/14001 and ISO 9001/14001/45001 standards, representing 81.5% of the total variants implemented by the studied industrial organizations, which confirms the first research hypothesis. As can be seen from Figure 1, the main integrated standards in Romania are ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001:2018. The question followed the number of ISO standards implemented and integrated. Based on these answers, and the number of ISO standards implemented, the research was focused only on the organizations that fall into the two categories of integrated management systems, ISO 9001 + ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 + ISO 14001 + ISO 45001, respectively. It can be observed that there are integrated with ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 also, other integrated standards: ISO 22000 [79], ISO/IEC 27001 [80], ISO 13485 [81], ISO 50001 [82], ISO/IEC 20000 [83], ISO 28000 [84], ISO/IEC 17025 [85], ISO 22301 [86], ISO 55001 [87].

3.2. Considerations for IMS Opportunity Indicators

The opportunities generated by updating ISO standards bring some key changes in terms of concepts, terms, and definitions, with the ultimate goal of ensuring stakeholders’ satisfaction. The updating of ISO management standards has led to opportunities and challenges in management theory, both for researchers and top managers who wish to implement IMSs, following the similarities in their requirements. Starting from these considerable updates, it is considered that the organization should have as its essential objective ensuring customer satisfaction, reducing costs, and increasing long-term competitiveness [4,5,88,89,90]. Following the analysis of the answers received from the respondents regarding the indicators of opportunities, we observe the following ranking:

• Reducing the costs of organizations/common requirements of standards/continuous improvement—representing 32.65% of respondents’ preferences;
• Increasing customer satisfaction, quality products, product compliance, increasing performance, effectiveness, opportunities for improvement and increasing the company’s image—representing 17.01% of respondents’ preferences;
• Reducing risks, increasing profit, reducing duplicates, focusing on objectives, improving communication and training staff—representing 16.33% of respondents’ preferences;
• Decrease in documentation, increase in organizational efficiency and new customers—representing 8.16% of respondents’ preferences;
• New partnerships with external clients, development of the company/reduction in production costs/increase in the number of clients—being tied at 6.12%, representing the respondents’ preferences.

The top management should make the transition to the circular economy; thus, emerging risks should be treated with resilient management. It should involve employees [91,92], introduce an organizational culture [93], set deadlines for addressing risk, opportunities and threats [94], train employees on the concept of risk management [95,96,97,98] and train employees on the sources of risk [98,99,100,101,102]. This question looked at the opportunities that led to the integration of IMS, with this being a resilient indicator that expresses the stage at which the organization is ready to become resilient.

3.3. The Degree of Knowledge of the Advantages of IMS

The aspect was analyzed through eight elements. The request was to prioritize the advantages of IMS implementation based on their significance. The question provides information to find the most used resilience indicators that organizations have used in their organization and that have given satisfactory results, with the goal of any organization being to make a profit.

As can be seen in Figure 2, the elements considered to determine the firm’s resilience are as follows, in order:

• Efficiency, which was preferred by over 80% of respondents;
• Improved operational efficiency, which accounted for over 70% of responses;
• Cost reduction, which also accounted for more than 70% of the responses;
• Reduction in duplicates and written documentation, which was preferred by more than 45% of respondents;
• Simplification of procedures, which was preferred by over 40% of respondents;
• Reducing the time for audits, which was preferred by just over 10%;
• External advantages, which were preferred by below 10%;
• Implementation of management systems in a shorter time, which was preferred by under 5%;
• Social benefits were preferred by less than 1%.

For a clearer identification of the analyzed factors, the analysis was carried out on principal components, as represented in Figure 3, which included a multidimensional analysis that took into account the size of the organization and the number of implemented standards. To highlight the links between the size of the organization, the following notations were used: A—small organizations (30–100 workers), B—medium organizations (100–500 workers) and C—large organizations (>500 workers). In addition, the number of integrated standard (S2—two standards, S3—three standards, S4—several standards) notations was also used in the following principal component analysis figures.

Through this question, the resilient indicators of the organization regarding the degree of knowledge of the advantages obtained following the implementation of an IMS in the organization were followed.

3.4. Considerations on IMS Internal Barrier Indicators

This aspect was analyzed by establishing the order of importance for the nine indicators that could be the internal barriers encountered when implementing the IMS. The results are shown in Figure 4.

This investigation aimed to identify the indicators that signify internal barriers to IMS implementation and maintenance, which were hypothesized to be determinants of enterprise emergence.

3.5. Elements That Can Be Considered as Representing External Barriers to IMS Implementation

The nine analyzed elements were identified based on insights gathered from the specialized literature. Figure 5 shows the distribution of responses, depending on the percentage obtained.

The first four elements considered the external barriers to total more than 80% of the external issues facing organizations.

A principal component analysis was conducted to clarify the problems faced by the organizations and to establish whether there are differences according to the size of the enterprise. As can be seen in Figure 6, small organizations (A) that have implemented three standards consider the risks of question marks regarding the external view of collaborators on integrated management systems (I1), insufficient benefits following the implementation of integrated management systems (I2), lack of communication with the work team and partners (I8) and different cultures with different personalities that prevent the integration of integrated management systems (I9).

External risks regarding various demands from interested parties (I5), permanent updating of regulations (I6), and the implementation of integrated management systems requiring culture change (I7) are considered by large organizations (C) that have implemented three and four or more standards and by medium-sized organizations (B) who implemented two and three standards.

In analyzing this question, we considered several studies [50,51,52,53,54,103] and observed that the results were similar, with the only variation being the ranking of importance identified by the conducted research.

The results of the study carried out by Salomone (2008) [51] show that the biggest obstacles were the risk of not assigning the correct level of importance to each concept of quality, environment, and safety (48%), staff reluctance, and the risk of confusing the requirements (11%), lack of technical support (16%) and difficulties in organizing an IMS (46%).

Another more recent study by Ikram et al. (2020) [103] shows that the most important external barriers to IMS implementation are lack of promotion from ISO, representing 24%, lack of procedures for implementation, representing 22%, introduction of a culture in the organization, representing 20%, and the lack of culture that prevents the implementation of IMS, representing 18%.

In response to this question, they looked at what the main elements are that constitute the external barriers faced by organizations, with this indicator being an emerging one, which helps organizations to develop and create plans and procedures for the implementation of IMS, helping employees to change the vision of what IMS means (changing the culture), to identify ISO guidelines to ensure successful implementation of IMS.

3.6. Indicator Considerations for IMS Strategies

Figure 7 shows the classification of the most used strategies in organizations. It is evident that while a variety of strategies exist, only two have been intensively used for their application:

• Courses in the field/continuous training of staff and orientation towards customer satisfaction were used by 31.29% of the organizations;
• The PDCA method was followed, and used by 29.73% of the responding organizations.

Three more strategies that are not as widely used were found, as shown below:

3.

Establishment of the company’s mission, long-term strategic objectives, resources, and advantages, which was used by 9.52% of the responding organizations;

4.

Studying the standards carefully; integration process planning; integration itself; evaluation; improvement of nonconformities, which were used by 5.41% of the responding organizations;

5.

The brainstorming method, which was used by 4.76% of the responding organizations.

Following the consultation and analysis of the researchers’ studies, the content of the answers was in agreement with the research in the field [9,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112].

Although ISO has not yet developed a standard for IMS implementation, researchers continue to find common elements of integration, benefits, and sustainable strategies, using different integration approaches [113] and the biggest challenges are in motivating and engaging human resources [114]. To address these challenges, the resilient and emergent indicators regarding the strategies most used for the integration of IMS in Romania were followed. As a result, this study focuses on the resilient and emergent indicators related to the most commonly used strategies for IMS integration in Romania.

3.7. Considerations Regarding Risk Indicators When Implementing IMS

Following the integration process, risk assessment should consider all risk factors in all MSs, aiming to identify and assess the risks with the most significant weight and which would have the most important effect [115,116]. The challenges for implementing management systems within any organization represent an opportunity for the organization to become emergent and resilient in a well-structured and comprehensive process system and risk monitoring to be used as an integral part of IMSs [117]. To identify the risks that may arise when implementing IMSs, researchers’ studies were taken into account [6,103,104,115,118,119,120,121]. After processing the data, it was established that the management representative’s lack of experience in IMS implementation represents the main risk, i.e., 42.66%, a risk studied by Selakovic (2016) [121].

The ranking of risks is continued by “more careful integration of a management system compared to the other systems, paying more attention to a certain management system”, representing 34.27% of respondents’ preferences, followed by “underestimation of some requirements from a certain management system management”, representing 18.88%, with these three risks totaling 95.81%.

In Figure 8, a multidimensional analysis was carried out for the main components according to the size of the organization and the number of implemented standards.

Analyzing the two-dimensional map, we noticed that large (C) and small (A) organizations with more than three standards implemented have a different approach to the risks that have manifested compared to the rest of the organizations. These follow the multiplicity of implementation and application requirements in current activities being difficult to manage (I6), the complexity of ISO requirements, the different interpretation of audits (I5), and the more complicated risk management, i.e., the indicators for each of the three components (I7).

The main risks manifested regarding the lack of experience in implementing integrated management systems of the management representative I3 is considered by medium-sized organizations (B) that have implemented four or more standards, with this being the main important indicator. This is followed by large organizations (C) that implemented two standards, where the main indicator is the more careful integration of a management system concerning the other systems (paying more attention to a certain management system (I1)).

In any organization, the risk analysis should be decided by the top management and they should constantly be attentive to changes in the external context and can manage risks sustainably, taking advantage of the opportunity for risk-based thinking [122].

To be resilient, the specific risks of each organization should be identified from the very beginning, in addition to the areas of risk and impact, the events and their causes, and last but not least the potential consequences that the specific risks can generate. At the same time, one must analyze the monitored and measured data, thus managing the effectiveness of the actions taken, and when a risk appears, the organization should update that new specific risk.

Through the question, aspects related to risks that could affect the resilience of the IMS were pursued and resilient indicators were pursued.

3.8. The Study on the Performance Indicators Used

A detailed analysis of the control factors of the performance indicators (KPIs) was carried out by Abisourour et al. (2020) [123] and the degree of integration by Will et al. (2019) [111], which shows that the IMS has three degrees of integration: added integration (objectives and documents); partial integration containing procedures and processes; full integration, which contains, in addition to the two mentioned degrees, the organizational resources, responsibilities and competent authorities to deal with audits and management system. Auditors use KPIs to evaluate the performance of IMS and critical factors associated with the organization’s goals, to track the performance of the IMS, to evaluate the critical factors related to the organization’s goals and the success of the organization and to assess the organization’s ability to fully, partially, or additionally integrate the IMS.

As can be seen in Figure 9, the performance indicators were ranked, based on the answers given by the respondents, as follows:

• The score obtained from customer audits—representing 51.68% of the responses;
• The score obtained following the annual audits—representing 24.83% of the responses;
• The annual profit obtained—representing 18.79% of the responses;
• The number of complaints received from customers—representing 3.36% of the responses;
• The semi-annual or annual evaluation (score) received from clients—representing 1.34% of the responses.

A multidimensional analysis for principal components is illustrated in Figure 10 to determine the indicators by which organizations are guided.

The I5 performance indicator is mainly considered by medium and large enterprises and is not an indicator followed by small enterprises that do not consider the I5 indicator on the score obtained from annual audits. Large enterprises offer a broader perspective on indicators, placing greater emphasis on I2 and I3 indicators while focusing less on the assessment of I4 and I1. An important performance indicator for small and medium-sized enterprises is that of the evaluation carried out by customers (I4). It can be seen that the way small businesses value performance indicators differs significantly from large businesses, probably due to a stronger connection between customers and the staff who carried out the assessment and the larger businesses’ orientation towards ensuring profit.

This question examined the internal and external resilient performance indicators (KPIs) used by organizations to guide the establishment of new objectives and planning of strategies for continuous improvement.

3.9. Considerations for Indicators of Elements That Are Not Amenable to Integration

To develop this area of research, we considered the work of the authors of [2,3,12,107,108,124,125] who attempted to address all kinds of issues that would lead to common patterns of integration for the implementation of different types of MSs, and the emerging indicators for IMS integration were considered.

After analyzing the answers, it was observed that 97.28% of the respondents answered that they did not identify elements that cannot be integrated, and only four organizations, i.e., 2.72%, answered that there are some specific elements for which they have not yet succeeded in their integration. The identification of elements susceptible to integration represents an emerging factor that helps in identifying and simultaneously controlling risks.

The challenge in global risk management is to anticipate risks and find constructive solutions to satisfy stakeholders. To respond to such challenges, the implementation of a management system within any organization presents an opportunity for the organization to become emergent and resilient in a well-structured and comprehensive process system, and risk monitoring for quality, environment, safety, and occupational health provides an integral part of continuous improvement [117].

3.10. Considerations Regarding the Indicators of the Integration Model Used for IMS Implementation

An important step in implementing the IMS was the standardization of the structure of the preferential standards used through the elaboration of Annex SL. Annex SL is at the heart of risk-based thinking and underpins the approach to risk [32].

The structure of the new standards reflected by Annex SL facilitates the alignment and integration of the management system, following the PDCA cycle and reducing risks at the organizational level by introducing “risk-based thinking” [126]. Figure 11 shows the resilient indicators regarding the integration model followed for IMS implementation.

To answer this question, researchers’ papers [9,12,107,108,109,110] who have proposed models for IMS implementation were analyzed. This question tracked the resilient indicators regarding the integration model followed for the IMS implementation.

3.11. Considerations Regarding the Indicators and Typology of Conducting IMS Audits

For this study, researchers’ studies were taken into account [1,9,51,54,106,124,127,128]. As can be seen in Figure 12, the audit integration typology was used as follows.

The integration of audits is necessary and timely, bringing many benefits such as reducing duplicates and written documentation [6,127,129,130,131], reducing the time for audits [127] and cost reduction [6,54,107,127,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139].

Comparing the results obtained in the study of Bernardo in 2009, we observe an increase in the types of audits carried out and those surveyed answered that only 63% were integrated internal audits and only 22% were external ones. Concerning the performance of audits, the resilient indicators regarding the type of performance of audits used by organizations for the implementation of IMS were followed.

3.12. Information and Documents That an IMS Should Include

To analyze the bureaucracy of the process (Figure 13), researchers’ studies [6,25,140] on the importance of documents that should be integrated to achieve a certain level of integration were taken into account.

A multidimensional analysis of the main components implemented by the organizations was carried out, as shown in Figure 14.

Regarding the important documents that organizations should develop to achieve a certain level of integration, we concluded that medium-sized organizations (B) that have implemented two and three standards and small organizations (A) that have implemented two standards consider integration organization policy I1 and system procedures and work instructions, also considering the integration process I3.

Large organizations (C) that have implemented three and four standards, medium organizations (B) that have implemented four standards, and small organizations (A) that have implemented three standards consider the I3 integrated process and documentation model, instructions for equipment, records, and technical documentation I4.

A different approach is taken by large organizations (C) that have implemented two standards and small organizations (A) that have implemented four or more standards. To analyze this approach, the resilient indicators regarding the typology of conducting audits used by organizations for the implementation of IMS were tracked.

3.13. IMS Implementation Considerations

For sustainable development, the organization should avoid disruptions caused by turbulence originating from their operating environments. Turbulence can threaten both the operation and the survival of the organization in an increasingly emerging and resilient market, also in conjunction with the new changes of Industry 4.0 [13,141].

The specific risks of the quality management system should be considered alongside the technologies and methodologies of Industry 4.0 [141] to streamline risk analysis processes, as there is a lack of integration between quality management and big data to cover specific risk gaps [142].

To achieve the aspects evaluated by the respondents regarding the emerging indicators, the studies of several researchers regarding these aspects were taken into account, including improving efficiency by using resources [6,130,143,144], improving the ability to respond to customer needs [25,54,127,130,131,132,136,145,146,147], higher levels of employee satisfaction; improving motivation [25,54,131,132,136,137], improving the organizational climate [25,54,127,130,131,132,136,145,146,147], improving communication [54,107,127,131,135,137,144,147], improving knowledge sharing [148], improving the systematization of procedures [54,127,131], defining responsibilities [54,107,127,131,135,137,144,147], reducing bureaucracy [51,127], improving the organizational image, a better relationship with stakeholders and improving competitiveness [25,54,127,130,131,132,136,145,146,147].

In recent years, the world economy has undergone important changes, both at the level of macroeconomics and at the level of organizations. These changes according to the claims of Di Noia (2016) [149] include an increase in previously known risks and an increase in the emergence of new risks in particular, due to new technologies, advances in scientific research, and changes in social and public perceptions.

Collaboration between new technologies allows data to be extracted from certain events and operations [150]; thus, there is traceability between processes, products, and organizational systems [151], and can be used to improve IMSs by improving organizational management, compliance, and risk management [152].

The results analyzed and presented in Figure 15 should be thoroughly analyzed by industrial organizations to try to improve all the aspects described and try to fructify the nerve points using methods and methodologies that bring added value to the organization (financial contribution) and the satisfaction of interested parties (quality products that are environmentally friendly and protect the health and safety of workers and end consumers).

A multidimensional principal component analysis was performed, as shown in Figure 16.

By analyzing Figure 16, we notice that after the integration of several management systems, the organizations improved certain aspects. The medium-sized organizations (B) that implemented two and three standards reported that they improved the ability to respond to the needs of customers (I2), improved communication (I6), reduced bureaucracy (I10), improved their organizational image (I11), achieved a better relationship with stakeholders (I12) and reduced difficulties in maintaining certification of management systems (I14), aspects that had a positive influence for large organizations (C) that have implemented four or more standards.

It was observed that medium (B) organizations that have implemented four or more standards consider indicators I9, I1, I4, I3, and I13. Improvements are also considered by medium (B) organizations that have implemented two and three standards, and large organizations (C) that have implemented four standards. A different approach is taken by small organizations (A) that have implemented four or more standards, with knowledge exchange (I7) as the main improvement.

Large (C) and small (A) organizations that implemented two and three standards noted benefits such as improved organizational climate (I5) and improved systematization of procedures (I8), a benefit also considered by organizations (B) with two and three standards and large organizations (C) with four standards.

For IMS implementation considerations, emergent indicators were followed, important indicators for discovering the disruptive risks that organizations faced when implementing IMSs.

4. Discussion

This study enriches the field by explaining how the manager’s opinions contribute to implementing IMSs to determine a resilient organization. A quantitative survey and a complete literature review bolstered the study’s comprehensive nature and, ultimately, its findings.

The updating of the standards has led to opportunities and challenges in management theory, both for researchers and for top managers who want to implement IMSs following the similarities of their requirements. Starting from these considerable updates, it is considered that the organization should have as its essential objective ensuring customer satisfaction, reducing costs, and increasing competitiveness in the long term [4,5,88,89,90] by managing emerging risks and dealing with them with resilient management by top managers. It was observed that the implementation of several standards in the researched organizations was based on risk-based thinking, emergence (sustainability) [153], and resilience [154].

The common objective of any emergent IMS aims to assist the members of the organization in managing the risks associated with the provision of products and services in the context of the requirements of customers and relevant stakeholders [117].

Before starting an integration process, there should first be an information session about what has already been carried out, that is, learning from the experience of those who have already carried out that process. To this end, the emergent organizations should analyze internal barriers [7,54,89,107,124,131,135,155] and external [50,52,53,54,89] encountered when implementing the IMS to be able to create a plan (PDCA) for the implementation. The plan should be carried out according to the strategies that have already been implemented [9,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112] because ISO has not produced a standard for IMS implementation.

The implementation of IMS creates risks, and the integration process should consider all risk factors [6,104,115,116,118,120,121] of all management systems. This is how the biggest risks that bring the biggest damage are evaluated. Risk reduction [4,5,88,89,90] creates new opportunities for top management, thus developing essential objectives to satisfy customers, reduce costs and increase long-term competitiveness, and the implementation of the circular economy in the organization, all of which strengthen the market position and increase the resilience of the organization.

The control factor should be present in any emergent organization [111,123] and it is used to track organizational performance, procedures, and processes and to evaluate critical factors to be able to intervene resiliently in any situation to achieve the proposed objectives. All of these objectives include internal and external indicators [123,156,157], which should be intelligible, useful, standardized, representative, coherent, and sensitive [123].

The identification of elements susceptible to integration represents the emerging element, an element that helps identify risks and, at the same time, control them. The model followed in implementing IMSs [1,12,107,108,124,148] has a key role in aligning top management strategies with risk identification and treatment.

For risk identification and treatment methods to be effective, Chaswa et al. (2020) [158] show that workers’ perception of risk has a significant effect on the methods applied and entrepreneurs should integrate behavior analysis and workers’ risk perception, to identify and treat risks correctly and limit possible events increasing the resilience of the organization.

An important aspect of organizational development is the introduction of a degree of culture [92,95,152,159] involving all employees and top managers to support the continuous improvement of the organizational culture, which will develop the company and strengthen it for new markets [25,127,130,131,132,136,145,146,160,161] and finally achieve the satisfaction of the interested parties [32,121,162,163].

To implement IMsS, organizations have a choice between the internalization factor [148,164] strategies that have advantages and disadvantages that should be evaluated before integration begins.

For the integration of management systems and to achieve a resilient organization, we must analyze the integration indicators achieved [54,106,108,165,166,167,168], the type of audit used [1,9,51,54,106,124,127,128] and the relevant IMS documents [6,25,140]. All this brings benefits to organizations, reducing duplicates and written documentation [6,127,129,130,131], reducing the time for audits [127] and cost reduction [6,54,107,127,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139].

Globalization and the new technologies of Industry 4.0 [13,141] create new opportunities for the development of organizations around the world. To be able to remain competitive in today’s booming markets, organizations should adapt to the new trend (sustainability), and introduce risk-based thinking into organizations, thus dealing with emerging risks [153] with resilient management [169].

Organizations should design and implement a lossless process system, that is, a sustainable management system, customized for each organization, thus obtaining ultra-efficient and resilient processes [170]. For this, organizations should integrate as many management systems as possible to achieve a coherent and high-performance system [171], thus facing the emerging risks and enabling the achievement of the organizational purpose and mission.

Organizations that have implemented more than two standards have a different approach to implementing IMSs than those that have implemented only two standards. The multidimensional analysis carried out maps the links between the size of the organization (number of employees) and the number of standards integrated by the organization, thus creating an overview of the important elements that it should integrate. By integrating the key elements, organizations can satisfy stakeholders and therefore meet their requirements. As the number of implemented standards increases and the organization grows, its processes should become more uniform and easier to manage. Consequently, the organization is almost required to integrate its management systems effectively.

This study’s comprehensive approach, theoretical implications, and methodological rigor of the survey and literature review will contribute to obtaining pieces of information based on managers’ experience in the emergent and resilient management of the enterprise. It will be helpful to managers seeking to enhance resilient enterprises. Both the survey and the literature review create a synergy that combines subjective experiences with objective performance data. The survey data offer valuable insights into the professional perceptions of managers from the industry when implementing IMSs. The analysis of the specialized literature accompanying the survey study reinforces the conclusions, which allows for a generalization of the results.

4.1. Empirical and Theoretical Contributions

This work provides insights into the current state of IMS implementation in Romanian industrial organizations. This study showed that the main resilient indicators, used by the managers of industrial organizations, offer key opportunities and benefits, driving the integration of management systems including streamlining operations, improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, reducing duplicates and documentation, and simplifying procedures. In this study, we also sought to discover the main emergent indicators that seem to be focused on cost reduction, improving customer and product quality, reducing risks, increasing profitability, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and sustainability.

Regarding the indicator that contributes to achieving IMS integration in an emergent industrial organization, exposed to the risks, and that acts as the main reason to increase the resilience, the main internal barriers to IMS implementation are the lack of experience of the top management, more careful integration of one management system compared to others, and underestimation of requirements from certain management systems.

For the main strategies used for IMS implementation, the managers responded that the most common are staff training/orientation towards customer satisfaction, the PDCA method, and this conclusion does not depend on the size of the organization or on the number of standards implemented.

One important process used by the managers to evaluate the integration is the use of audits. The managers are aware that the integration of audits is necessary because it brings information and benefits like reducing duplicates, audit time, and costs. It seems that the top managers of industrial organizations are moving towards more integrated audit approaches.

When the typologies of the industrial organization size were taken into account, it was revealed that small organizations value performance indicators related to customer satisfaction and feedback more than the indicators focused on annual profits or scores from external audits, which are more emphasized by medium and large organizations; medium-sized along with large organizations tend to focus more on the information obtained from annual audits and that the key performance indicators used in large organizations appear to be more focused on financial metrics like annual profits, rather than customer-centric indicators like customer complaints, which are considered more important by small organizations.

The number of standards implemented tends to be a factor that influences the approach to IMSs in industrial organizations. Organizations that implement more standards tend to have a different approach to IMS implementation compared to those with fewer standards. In this context, larger and medium-sized organizations focus more on indicators like customer satisfaction, communication, reducing bureaucracy, and improving organizational image. The industrial organizations that have implemented two and three standards consider external risks related to various demands from interested parties, permanent updating of regulations, and the need for cultural change when implementing IMSs.

In this study, we observed and argued that the conclusions can be extended to worldwide industrial organizations. The literature study, which was carried out to validate our study, confirmed that to implement an emergent and resilient IMS, the manager of the organizations should know the advantages obtained from the implementation [29,54,106,108,114,165,171,172]; internal and external barriers encountered during implementation [7,51,107,135]; the strategies that followed [104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112]; the risks that appeared when it was integrated [6,104,115,116,117,118,120,121]; the opportunities that led to the integration [4,5,88,89,90]; the control factors for IMSs [10,111,123,148,156]; KPI performance indicators [123,156,157]; the elements that are not susceptible to integration [2,3,12,107,108,124,125]; integration indicators [1,12,104,107,108,124,133,148]; risk analysis methods [7,51,109,115,116,122,158,169,173,174,175]; the degree of culture in organizations [25,32,92,95,121,127,130,131,132,136,145,146,152,159,161,162,163,176]; integration framework guide [10,106,148,164,177]; the model used for integration [9,32,107,108,109,110,126,155]; indicators of the level of integration achieved [54,106,153,165,166,167]; the typology of conducting audits [1,9,51,54,106,124,127,128,148]; important documents that should include an IMS [6,25,140]; the problems encountered when the implementation was carried out [1,7,9,51,54,107,131,135,137,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187].

4.2. Limitations and Future Implications

The survey methodology presents a few limitations but also offers insightful information. Due to the research’s limited scope, the conclusions presented apply only to a few aspects when implementing IMSs to obtain a resilient organization. The results are in line with the trend obtained at the international level but should account for some particularities of the strategies adopted by managers and the external and internal context. Also, perception-based data introduce bias and limitations to generalization. The integrated IMS paradigm should be examined in a global context using other objective performance criteria. The subsequent research should include and ensure more remarkable thoroughness and analyze other aspects. Some of these aspects are presented in Section 4. Future studies will be necessary to develop a more substantive and convincing linkage between the requirements of the standards, sustainability, and resilience in different contexts, keeping in mind the impact of Industry 4.0 and Artificial Intelligence.

5. Conclusions

This research combines theory and practice in implementing IMSs to achieve a resilient enterprise. The survey findings offer empirical data regarding the extent to which managers value key components of IMSs. Statistical analyses include aspects related to the organization’s size in correlation with the number of management standards implemented. To obtain validation of the managers’ opinions, a literature review was conducted and thus improved validation was obtained. Through the information added in Section 4, which expands the studied issue, this paper contributes to the management literature and constitutes an important guide when considering increasing organizational resilience. The survey questions and the gathered opinions facilitated the selection of action strategies tested by managers and yielded positive outcomes.

In industrial organizations, the number of implemented standards and the size of the organization are important discriminant factors that should be taken into account when integrating management systems because the integration shapes a new management model for the organization and the strategy and the indicator adopted by the managers to establish an IMS can determine the organization’s resilience.