IMS 9001/14001/18001 integrated management

Strategic management

Strategic management focuses on achieving a company’s competitive advantage. It utilizes the organizational experience in relation to its technologies, social structures, and processes against competitors in the market. While normative management functions as a foundation for activities, it is the task of strategic management to provide orientation for these activities.

Operational management

The operational management dimension is characterized by the processes and tasks that apply on practice the realization of organizational norms and strategies. It aims at optimizing process efficiency and effective social cooperation to enhance performance, both within the organisation and with external stakeholders. Thus, the operational management level facilitates the development of processes, products, and services.

Integration mechanisms

The IMC identifies three integration mechanisms that span the management dimensions and ensure the alignment between them. These integration mechanisms are defined as meta-integration, vertical integration, and horizontal integration. Meta-integration is based on the management and business philosophy which defines the company’s consideration of and relation to its stakeholders’ values. Vertical integration is achieved throughout the three management dimensions by means of structures, activities, and behavior. Structures describe the translation of corporate governance into effective management and efficient processes. Activities refer to the development and application of corporate policies, strategic programmes, and operational tasks (e.g. marketing activities like acquiring customers or performing customer service). Behavior relates to defining roles that ensure that the company’s culture and normative values are put into practice. Horizontal integration is about aligning the structures, activities, and behavior throughout the distinct management dimensions.

Application

The IMC has been adapted in various contexts, such as foresight frameworks or cybernetic theories for organisational intelligence. More recently, it has also been used as a foundation for an Integrated Business Model Framework by Oliver D. Doleski that identifies normative, strategic, and operational business model elements. Breuer & Lüdeke-Freund adopted the basic distinction between management levels and integration mechanisms to develop a framework for values-based innovation management stressing the impact of normative orientations for research, design and management of corporate innovation. The IMC is closely related to systems approaches such as Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model due to its systemic and cybernetic character.