Listen to ISO 9001:2015 for organizational competitiveness: Correlation between change management and improvement

In their quest to achieve superior performance and business results, organizations have extensively adopted models such as ISO 9001 Quality Managements Standards. Research supports that Quality Management System brings significant benefits for organizations competitiveness and success and more than 1 million organizations of all activity sectors worldwide have implemented ISO 9001. In a world of increasingly complexity and interconnection, the revised ISO 9001:2015 International Standard aims to ensure that Quality Management Systems are flexible while remaining reliable. The concept of Change Management was introduced in the standard and Improvement can be achieved both in a continual/incremental mode (already present in the ISO 9001:2008 edition) and in a breakthrough change/disruptive mode (new in ISO 9001:2015). ISO 9001:2015 is now closer to Business Excellence Models, such as the EFQM, that highlight the need for agility and flexibility for enduring success. To access if organizations that have already implemented ISO 9001:2015 are indeed managing change and achieving improvement, and if there is a relationship between these two variables, a survey was held with IRCA ISO 9001 Registered Auditors on a worldwide basis. Sample normality was confirmed trough Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test and the hypothesis was tested by using Pearson Correlation coefficient. The findings show that the auditee organizations have positively implemented ISO 9001:2015 requirements on change management and improvement. There is also a strong positive correlation between change management and improvement, suggesting that the organizations that properly manage change by planning, designing, implementing, and controlling change in an effective and efficient way, demonstrate a higher level of performance and results improvement. These conclusions have significant implications for the Quality/Organizational Excellence Management Body of Knowledge, requiring a new way of thinking for 21^st-century organizations and reinforced attention to change management processes and the skills needed by the Quality/Organizational Excellence Managers professionals, for their successful use.