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1 Introduction
In a remarkably short time, economic globalisation has changed the world's economic order, bringing with it new challenges and opportunities. Innovation merits a special attention nowadays, given its importance for firms in order to adapt to the global market and to provide customized solutions to consumers. Customers are becoming more sophisticated, segmented and demanding, and expect more in terms of customization, newness, quality and price ([38] Stark, 2011). To adapt to these customer's needs, organizations need to provide quality standardised products that are innovative and environmentally friendly ([38] Stark, 2011). In this context, the management of innovation, customer satisfaction and the implementation of quality and environmental standards in organizations are considered essential for organizations to compete in the markets.
This research is an important step forward in finding out the impact of systems integration on innovation and customer satisfaction. This research wants to explore how the integration of management systems relates to the process of innovation and how the innovative products or services will satisfy the customer demand, needs and requirements. Systems integration can be considered as a type of organizational innovation ([21] Llach et al. , 2011), thus, there exists a strong relationship between these two constructs. Moreover, innovation increases customer satisfaction as it maximizes the value of their purchases. In order to satisfy their customers, companies need to be innovative and to this, they have to manage the different systems in the organization effectively. Therefore, firms should be committed to managing integrated management systems (IMSs), innovation, customer satisfaction and the existing interrelationships among them.
In this context, the aim of this study is to propose scales to measure MSs integration characteristics, customer satisfaction and organization innovation as well as to critically analyse if there is any relationship among these constructs in order to help organizations to better understand and manage these elements. This yields inside into the attributes of the integration characteristics that an organization should focus on to achieve the goal of customer's satisfaction and organization innovation and hence increase organization performance.
2 Literature review
2.1 Innovation, customer satisfaction and management system standards
In reviewing the literature on innovation, various definitions have emerged from different perspectives. An innovation is defined by the Oslo manual ([30] OECD, 2005) as:
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