Comprehensive approaches to quality management and certified quality management systems (QMS) are becoming increasingly important to succeed in global competition. Despite a growing number of certifications, the intended positive effects of QMS often fall short of companies' expectations. The systems do not achieve their desired effects in improving products, services, and processes. This is often due to the fact that QMS are implemented and used only formally—sometimes merely to maintain certification.

It is often overlooked that QMS are sociotechnical systems, whose functionality depends on the interplay between people and procedural structures. They define the framework conditions for employees' daily work and thus provide organizational structures for everyone working in the company. The functionality and benefits of QMS therefore develop only to the extent that the systems are actively and enthusiastically lived and shaped by the employees of a company.

This work is situated in an interdisciplinary field between organizational psychology and engineering sciences, with a strong focus on practical applications in small and medium-sized enterprises. It provides a methodology to evaluate existing QMS in terms of their motivational design and to derive concrete improvement potentials for integrating motivational psychological insights into the systems—without increasing system complexity or complicating certification.