Do You Walk the Talk in Quality Culture?

Abstract

We present an action research project to foster quality culture in business processes. The client setting is in the food industry, a vital sector for our society and one of the most regulated in the world. Food production involves auditing throughout the supply chain and a demanding information system (IS), with numerous requirements grounded on the organizational policies. Our ISO₂ approach – for joint development of IS and quality management system (QMS) – was tailored with a set of routines and artifacts to promote quality culture in the maintenance process of the selected organization. This contribution enables a graphical visualization of existing gaps between the high-level principles endorsed by an organization and its confirmation: (1) instantiating company policies at process level; (2) contrasting the assessment of the process owner and of the quality auditor; and (3) comparing the desired and the real practices in a specific business process. An audit from a food retail group confirmed the positive outcome of ISO₂ approach in what regards the internalization of quality principles while developing the IS. Moreover, we performed a longitudinal evaluation to verify enduring effects of the ISO₂ approach in business processes. We gathered evidence that ISO₂ can (1) improve process users’ awareness of quality culture; (2) suggest an approach to increase trust in company policies; and (3) contribute to business process improvements.