Application of EN ISO 9001:2008 and EN ISO 9004:2009 standards and business performances improvement of small and medium enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The system of quality management in accordance to standards of ISO 9000 series intoday’s dynamic environment is rapidly becoming the business imperative for companies, especially for small and medium enterprises which strive to increase competitiveness and improve their business performances. The link between standards andbusiness performances has been capturing a lot of attention of academic community,which mainly focuses on a different benefits that companies can achieve by adequately implementing these standards.The research presented in this paper focuses on small and medium entreprises inB&H which have an established system of quality management in accordance toISO 9000 series standards in order to determine whether companies apply thesestandards in a way to improve their business performances and increase their competitiveness.The research results show that the requirements of ISO 9001:2009 standard are notadequately implemented in small and medium companies in B&H, which furtherimplicates their indisposition for the application of ISO 9004:2009 standard. Therefore, full positive effects of these standards on business performance and competitiveness improvement of companies are not achieved.