Standards and norms in management

Norms and standards in management are binding rules, requirements, or standards of conduct of people in processes or requirements for products quality. They represent a common agreement about the characteristics of products (goods and services), the processes and human behavior in order to ensure or harmonize their same characteristics, same behavior and same method of management. The aim and purpose is therefore a standardization, compatibility and interoperability. Norms may be written and unwritten (formalized), norms may be divided into technical and non-technical and they have varying degrees of accountability and a different scope of validity. Technical standards, by width of joint agreement and therefore of the impact on the organization, are divided into:

• Business norms and standards - it is a common agreement within the company or organization, e.g. different types of regulation
• De facto standards - these standards are commonly used and recognized by the professional community (e.g. ITIL)
• Branch Standards - are defined by a branch institution (such as web W3C standards, accounting standards, valuation standards)
• National standards and norms - are defined and adopted by a competent national office (such as DIN, ANSI, BS, CSN…)
• International standards and norms - are internationally valid and recognized, in particular, international ISO standards, European standards EN

In addition to the listed types of technical norms and standards, the term is used in organizations as:

• Performance standard (working standard) - to express the standard of performance and efficiency of employee or organizational unit
• Trading standards - for the unification of communication in business (e.g. INCOTERMS)
• Technical standards - for the unification of technical conditions, quality increase or compatibility improvement (e.g. Dublin Core)
• Moral values and norms - for the expression of common and shared values as part of organizational culture
• Legal standards - for an expression of legal regulation

Practical use of norms and standards in management: Using norms and standards are set and enforced common characteristics, shape, behavior and work practices, it is defined minimum standard or it evaluates the acceptability, usualness or a state of processes or products. The standards are then used to describe reference values, behavior or characteristics. They represent the regulation, scale, the right amount of something usual, expected or appropriate. The main benefits of norms and standards:

• Unification of requirements for characteristics and reduction of diversity of products and processes (i.e. standardization)
• Protection of consumers by increasing the quality or setting minimum standards of quality
• Improvement of communication and exchanges between enterprises on an international scale (compatibility and interoperability)
• Unification of communication between businesses (union terms symbols and codes)

In terms of management there are important international ISO standards, European standards EN, national standards, professional and technical norms and standards (IEC, ANSI) and various business standards. Important are also binding standards such as accounting, construction, web (web standards such as XML, HTML defines a consortium of W3C), or service standards.

Standards are usually associated certification authorizing the use of the brand of given standard. Certification serves to customers as the internationally valid evidence of the reliability and credibility of the supplier, product or service.

Important norms and standards in management (used in management field or operation organization) are following:

• ISO 9001 - Quality management system
• ISO/TS 10004:2010 - Quality management system – Customer satisfaction – Guidelines for monitoring and measuring
• ISO 10005 - Guidelines for the preparation, review, adoption, implementation and revision of quality
• ISO 10006 - Guidelines for quality managament in projects
• ISO 10011 - Guidelines for auditing quality systems
• ISO 10013 - Guidelines for quality management system documentation
• ISO 14001 - Environmental management systems
• ISO/TS 16949 - Quality management system for automotive production and relevant service part organizations
• ISO 17799 - Information Security Management System
• ISO 20000 – IT Service Management System
• ISO 21500 - (preparing ISO stanadard Guidance on project management) - (09/2012)
• ISO 22000 - Food safety management systems - Requirements for any organization in the food chain
• ISO 26000 - Guidance on social responsibility
• ISO 27001 - Information security management systems
• ISO 31000 Risk management Principles and Guidelines
• ISO 19439 - Enterprise integration – Framework for enterprise modelling
• IEC 1025 -FTA (Fault Tree Analysis)
• OHSAS 18001 Occupation Health and Safety Assessment Series for health and safety management systems
• Accounting standards (IAS/IFRS, US GAAP)
• Business standards, e.g. INCOTERMS (INCOTERMS 2010)

There are community standards recognized and widely used (de facto standards):

• BPMN (de facto standard for Business Process Modeling Notation )
• ITIL (de facto standard for IT Service Management System)
• PMBOK (de facto standard for Project Management)
• PRINCE2 (de facto standard for Project Management)