Synergies between quality management and information systems: a literature review and map for further research

Abstract

We review existing work on synergies between information systems (IS) and quality management systems (QMS) and propose avenues to advance them further, leading to a whole that is greater than the sum of the two parts, moving away from current practice, where the lifecycle of the IS and the QMS are handled independently, by different teams, equipped with disconnected tools and methodologies. We start with a literature review that makes sense of a puzzle of 91 articles published since 1979. Three focal categories of papers are identified and discussed, namely, (1) IS in support of the QMS; (2) QMS in support of the IS; and (3) a shared view of the IS and QMS. As 80% of the papers address the limited perspective of one type of system being dominant, in the second part of the paper we propose a map for further research.