Abstract
In a modern global economy, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have inviolable importance and inclusion in the overall social development and economic growth. Regarding the high share of SMEs in the total number of companies, given the number of employees and the share in export orientation, the question of SMEs existence, as well as their market share and competitiveness in the global environment, represents prime relevance to any national economy. Therefore, the issue of quality becomes a critical component of achieving competitiveness in delivering products and services to their consumers (customers.) Due to this extremely delicate issue, each company establishes and implements a systematic process relationship or a quality management system as a part of its general management mechanism. This is a reason for SMEs management to strategically decide on the challenges of introducing a quality management system; thus, to improve their competitiveness on the domestic and foreign markets, which is a very demanding, exhaustive and time absorbing process requiring detailed preparation and collective engagement. The basic reasons for applying a quality management system are apostrophised in any business objectives – improving business processes, product quality and services, increasing spending as a factor of developing higher market share, better reputation (image) and sustainable business results. Due to the measurable quantitative and qualitative attributes and features that can significantly enhance the introduction of quality management systems into practice of SMEs, numerous studies have been carried out, some of which are conducted within the last two decades. For the authors, this was an initiative to conduct a survey, within this paper, in the Primorsko-goranska county (Croatia) during the month of July 2018, in which a number of SMEs were analysed in the crucial areas of quality management systems. The authors’ objective was to assess the viability of SMEs regarding their application of a quality management system. The basic hypothesis was that introducing quality management systems into SMEs contributes to their foreign competitiveness i.e. strengthening their export activity in general. Beside positive outputs of applying quality management, the authors’ research presented in this paper also established some relatively high and negative quantifications in relation to the application of the quality management system. Such outcomes represent justified reasons for future scientific research in this area.
Highlights
Entrepreneurship has an acceleration function for the entire national economy performing as a key element in generating growth and creating new jobs, generally increasing the competitiveness of the whole society
Some of the researches reported that solving an issue of introducing a quality management system is based on the correlation with international competitiveness of the company
This correlation showed to be positive in a significant number of researches, stating that quality management systems were introduced for the purpose of improving international competitiveness and that in practice these systems could contribute genuinely to the improvement of international competitiveness [9]
Summary
Entrepreneurship has an acceleration function for the entire national economy performing as a key element in generating growth and creating new jobs, generally increasing the competitiveness of the whole society. Companies whose operations are certified in accordance with the requirements of ISO standards became more recognized and competitive on domestic and foreign markets This has implied a trend of introducing a quality management system to strategic development within a large number of SMEs. The figure shows the basic procedure when implementing a quality management system. Observing the obstacles that may emerge when introducing the ISO quality management system in SMEs, several key types of issues have been identified: inadequate financial resources, insufficient or inadequate human resources, insufficient knowledge of process management regarding quality objectives, planning not covered by strategic objectives, inadequate or even non-existent documentation for all business processes [7]. The quality management system certificate, according to ISO 9001:2015, enables companies to compete in the global market being a necessary prerequisite of new business creation [19] This system represents a useful tool in the organization and improvement of its operation. These factors are: high costs (consultations, reviews and registrations), long time of implementation, high formalism, a double customer ethics (regarding their insistence on quality system introduction and doubting the growth of the price caused by higher quality) [20]
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