Barriers of Implementing Integrated Management System in Small and Medium-sized Metal Enterprises: A Conceptual Model

An integrated management system includes a strategy for managing multiple systems and increasing productivity in order to meet the needs of stakeholders, which uses different standards for the development of these systems. These systems require resources such as human power, time and cost, which put a lot of pressure on organizations and lead to obstacles during its implementation and reduce productivity. In this regard, this article was conducted with the aim of designing a conceptual model of obstacles to the establishment of an integrated management system and using a combined method (content analysis and interpretive structural modeling). The statistical population of this research is small and medium companies in the field of metal industries of Qazvin province. Sampling was done in a purposeful manner and until theoretical saturation was reached, and based on this, twelve specialists and activists in this field were interviewed. While extracting the components related to the obstacles to the establishment of the integrated management system, the conceptual model of the research was developed, and according to the review of the research background and interviews with experts and the method of content analysis, 90 open codes, 28 concepts and seven categories with the titles of stakeholders External, employees, resources and management, regulatory and legal factor, cultural-organizational factor, establishment and financial-economic component were extracted and modeled based on interpretive structural modeling method. Also, the degree of dependence and the guiding power of each of the components is presented. Finally, solutions to improve the deployment performance of this system are provided.