Integrated Management Systems: Trends for Portugal in the 2025 horizon

Abstract This investigation is focused on the Integration of Management Systems and the proposed approach is supported on available literature regarding Management Systems and Integrated Management Systems, as well as, one questionnaire conducted by the authors and sent to 843 Portuguese Organizations with two or more certified Management Systems. The 55 valid answers were considered towards this work. Attained results show that the future of the Integrated Management Systems encompasses total integration of Management Systems, and the main reasons provided are that Organizations Integrate their Management Systems mainly for internal reasons such as standardization/ simplification/ organization, resources reduction, documented information integration and reduction. Major difficulties for the integration of Management Systems concern the lack of specialized human resources. This is a pioneer investigation in Portugal since there are no similar studies in the country regarding trends pertaining to Integrated Management Systems.