Hence, the research also confirmed that internal capabilities
play an important role in this respect. It was noticeable that
even though both CSOs adopted the same standard, the overall
approach was different. One CSO relied on a rather procedure
based and written based approach whist the other focused
more on a system approach centred around flowcharts of key
process and procedures.
The investigation of non-conformance issues revealed that
both CSOs had a large percentage of non-conformance issues
related to documentation. On the one hand, it meant that CSOs
really struggled to maintain their documentation up-to-date.
This was happening for several reasons such as this practice
was not reinforced by the management, more important issues
took over, unreasonable amount of paperwork was created as
a part of EMS to satisfy the certification rather than to assist
the operations. On the other hand, this type of non-conformances
was the easiest for the external auditor to pick up
and the importance of these non-conformances was often marginal
for organisational success.