ISSN 2953-6367

http://revistainvestigo.com

Marzo 2026

Vol. 7 No ,19, PP. 387-403

https://doi.org/10.56519/f83kex62

INGENIERÍA DE CALIDAD EN LOS PROCESOS DE COMPRAS Y

ADQUISICIONES EN LAS PYMES SUDAMERICANAS: UNA

REVISIÓN NARRATIVA

QUALITY ENGINEERING IN PROCUREMENT AND

PURCHASING PROCESSES IN SOUTH AMERICAN SMES: A

NARRATIVE REVIEW

Antus Jose¹

{antus.jose@upec.edu.ec¹}

Fecha de recepción: 10/03/2026 / Fecha de aceptación:

27/03/2026 / Fecha de publicación: 31/03/2026

RESUMEN: Esta revisión narrativa sintetiza la literatura publicada entre 2020 y 2025 que

examina la aplicación de herramientas de ingeniería de calidad, en particular la norma ISO 9001

y los modelos de evaluación y selección de proveedores, en los procesos de compras y

adquisiciones de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMEs) de América del Sur. Se empleó un

diseño de revisión narrativa, consultando las bases de datos Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO,

REDALYC y LATINDEX, con un período de cobertura de 2020 a 2025. Se incluyeron estudios

empíricos y conceptuales publicados en español, portugués e inglés, seleccionados mediante

criterios de inclusión temáticos y geográficos. Se empleó un diseño de revisión narrativa,

consultando las bases de datos Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO, REDALYC y LATINDEX, con un

período de cobertura de 2020 a 2025. Se incluyeron estudios empíricos y conceptuales

publicados en español, portugués e inglés, seleccionados mediante criterios de inclusión

temáticos y geográficos. La revisión no sigue el protocolo PRISMA, ya que corresponde a una

síntesis interpretativa y temática, no a una revisión sistemática. Los resultados revelan que el

78% de las PYMEs estudiadas seleccionan proveedores exclusivamente con base en relaciones

personales, sin criterios documentados de evaluación y que la implementación de tarjetas de

puntuación reduce los defectos de materiales entrantes, aunque su sostenibilidad depende de

la capacitación continua del personal. Esta revisión contribuye a la literatura regional al

identificar la brecha entre los marcos teóricos de calidad y su aplicación operativa en el

contexto de las PYMEs sudamericanas, y propone una agenda de investigación orientada a

construir modelos contextualizados de ingeniería de calidad para la función de compras.

Palabras clave: Ingeniería de calidad, ISO 9001, evaluación de proveedores, gestión de compras,

PYMES, América del Sur

¹Facultad de Comercio Internacional, Integración, Administración y Economía Empresarial (FCIIAEE), Universidad Politécnica

Estatal del Carchi, Carrera de Logística y Transporte, Tulcán-Ecuador, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3396-0510, +593 962 680 853.

387

Revista Científica Multidisciplinaria InvestiGo

Riobamba – Ecuador

Cel: +593 97 911 9620

revisinvestigo@gmail.com

QUALITY ENGINEERING IN PROCUREMENT AND PURCHASING PROCESSES IN SOUTH AMERICAN SMES: A

NARRATIVE REVIEW

ABSTRACT: This narrative review synthesizes the literature published between 2020 and

2025 that examines the application of quality engineering tools—specifically the ISO 9001

standard and supplier evaluation and selection models—in the purchasing and procurement

processes of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South America. A narrative review

design was employed, consulting the Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO, REDALYC, and LATINDEX

databases, covering the period from 2020 to 2025. Empirical and conceptual studies published

in Spanish, Portuguese, and English were included, selected based on thematic and geographic

inclusion criteria. A narrative review design was employed, consulting the Scopus, Web of

Science, SciELO, REDALYC, and LATINDEX databases, covering the period from 2020 to 2025.

Empirical and conceptual studies published in Spanish, Portuguese, and English were included,

selected based on thematic and geographic inclusion criteria. The review does not follow the

PRISMA protocol, as it constitutes an interpretive and thematic synthesis rather than a

systematic review. The results reveal that 78% of the SMEs studied select suppliers exclusively

based on personal relationships, without documented evaluation criteria, and that the

implementation of scorecards reduces defects in incoming materials, although their

sustainability depends on ongoing staff training. This review contributes to the regional

literature by identifying the gap between theoretical quality frameworks and their practical

application in the context of South American SMEs, and proposes a research agenda aimed at

developing context-specific quality engineering models for the procurement function.

Keywords: Quality engineering, ISO 9001, supplier evaluation, procurement management,

SMEs, South America

INTRODUCCIÓN

Procurement and purchasing is one of the most strategically important functions of any

organization in the modern global economic environment, which in manufacturing and service

companies can take up 50 to 80 percent of the total costs of operations (1) in term o c. In the case

of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South America, the efficiency and quality of

these processes are not just an operational issue but a determinant of existence in terms of

competitiveness. The foundational quality management literature has long argued that

procurement quality is inseparable from organizational performance (2). Despite this topicality,

the application of quality engineering principles to the procurement and purchasing operations

of South American SMEs has been highly under-researched in the scholarly literature, especially

in Andean countries such as Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. But little attention has been given to

its transposition to procurement processes, where it is not only the product specifications, but

also the performance of suppliers, purchasing processes, and compliance with contracts. This

discrepancy is especially noticeable in the environment of developing economies, where SMEs

often have informal supplier networks, a weak institutional base, and restricted access to quality

certification resources (3).

In its 2015 version, the ISO 9001 standard sets the quality management system (QMS)

requirements, which directly involve the management of the externally provided processes,

products, and services, making the quality of procurement the core of the organizational

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compliance (4). However, Latin American studies always show that the adoption of ISO 9001 by

SMEs is usually more performative than substantive, i.e. they are certified to access the market,

but not to actually enhance the internal procurement procedures (5).

Simultaneously, supplier evaluation and selection models have also developed considerably

within the academic literature, moving beyond the simple use of cost-based criteria to multi-

criteria decision analysis (MCDA) models that incorporate the dimensions of quality, delivery,

sustainability, and risk (6). However, little is known about the application of the models in practice

to South American SMEs, and the majority of companies use informal and relationship-based

supplier selection that does not have any written requirements or performance monitoring (7).

The case of Ecuador is a very eloquent example. According to regional economic data, SMEs

constitute over 90 percent of all registered enterprises in Ecuador and contribute significantly to

employment and GDP (8). Ecuador’s dollarized economy does not have the cushioning effect of

the local currency depreciation on imported certification costs. The average cost of the ISO 9001

auditing and consulting services, which is usually charged in the international markets, is a

relatively higher financial burden on the Ecuadorian SMEs compared to Colombia or Peru where

local currencies partly cover the costs. Moreover, there are only a few nationally recognized

certification agencies in Ecuador, which adds to the price and the time of the certification. The

data released by INEC shows that 99.2 percent of all businesses in Ecuador are SMEs, 94.9 percent

of which are micro-enterprises with less than 10 employees (8), which means that the per-

employee cost of implementing ISO is disproportionately high. This economic disadvantage of the

structure adds to the institutional environment that it is already difficult to adopt quality

management in procurement.

This narrative review fills this gap by synthesizing peer-reviewed evidence published within the

period of 2020-2025 that explores the intersection of quality engineering, procurement

management, and South American SME context. The theoretical framework of the study is based

on two complementary theories: Total Quality Management (TQM) that offers the systemic and

organizational perspective of procurement quality as a cross-functional task, and Supply Chain

Quality Management (SCQM) that places purchasing decisions in the larger context of relational

and operational dynamics of the upstream supplier networks.

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Figure 1. Conceptual framework integrating TQM and SCQM applied to SME procurement quality in South America.

The diagram shows how TQM principles and SCQM converge to shape procurement quality practices moderated

by institutional and contextual factors.

This narrative review has three aims: to investigate the implementation of the ISO 9001 quality

management system in the procurement and purchasing processes of South American SMEs; to

review the models of supplier evaluation and selection described in the literature on the topic

and to determine their applicability in the context of the issue and limitations to the

implementation of quality engineering practices in SME purchasing. Through these goals, the

review will serve as a contribution to a more contextually based conceptualization of the

procurement quality engineering in South America and help to trigger a regionally based research

agenda.

First, the performative compliance gap and total quality management (TQM) were examined.

Nonetheless, the theoretical framework points to an implementation gap in the South American

SME environment. The institutional realities often lead to a performative compliance

phenomenon, in which SMEs seek to be certified to ISO 9001 not because it will help them to

improve internal procurement procedures but because it will enable them to enter the market or

meet the public bidding requirements. This leads to the structural decoupling of the official

requirements of the standard with the realities of purchasing departments and purchasing

clauses as the least applied elements of the QMS. The lack of specific quality training in purchasing

staff, combined with financial and technical impediments, causes procurement decisions to be

made on the basis of price and availability instead of strict conformance requirements.

Second, supply chain quality management (SCQM) and relational procurement. Whereas TQM

organizes the internal logic of quality, SCQM incorporates the multidimensional aspects of

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procurement in the modern world that are complex and network-based. The SCQM theory

assumes that the quality of a focal firm is mathematically connected to the quality capabilities of

its upstream suppliers, which requires a change in transactional purchasing to strategic upstream

quality integration.

Nevertheless, this theoretical framework demonstrates a gap between the complexity of these

models and the realities of South American SMEs operations. MCDA frameworks demand

historical data, calibrated measurement systems and analytical capacity which are grossly

wanting in low-data SME environments.

Studies have shown that almost all regional SMEs choose suppliers almost solely on the basis of

personal relations and informal trust networks without even considering written evaluation

standards. Nonetheless, it generates structural weakness, which requires the creation of hybrid,

simplified evaluation models, including tailored scorecards, to supplement relational capital with

more manageable and structured quality standards.

Finally, Institutional void and contextual constraints. Supply chain informality: The informality of

SME supply ecosystems in countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia is widespread, forming

the structural boundary condition. Informal suppliers do not have verifiable quality records and

standardized records, and formal audit processes and conventional SCQM integration are

structurally infeasible. Public procurement misalignments: Public procurement systems tend to

reveal systemic non-conformances among SME suppliers. Efficiency only integration: Efficiency

efforts in the area often implement lean approaches to shorten the purchasing cycle without

incorporating parallel quality measurements.

MATERIALES Y MÉTODOS

The study was conducted using a narrative review design due to the objectives of the study, which

presuppose an interpretative and thematic synthesis of evidence based on heterogeneous

sources, such as qualitative case studies, empirical surveys, action research, and conceptual

frameworks. Compared to systematic reviews, which require a replicable and protocol-based

search strategy, narrative reviews enable the incorporation of a wide range of literature around

a consistent conceptual argument and are therefore particularly appropriate to new or under-

theorized areas (9),(10). Narrative reviews are especially suited to synthesizing qualitative and

mixed-method evidence across heterogeneous research contexts (11). This method allows

determining patterns, tensions, and gaps throughout literature without limiting the scope to a

particular type of methodology.

The geographic coverage of the review encompasses peer-reviewed articles that were carried out

in or directly related to South American nations, especially Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and

Argentina, where the issues of SME development and the quality of procurement have been most

reported. The operational definition of SMEs followed the classification criteria established by the

Inter-American Development Bank for Latin American economies (12). Brazilian studies were also

included as long as they made regional methodological contributions or theoretical frameworks

that could be applied to smaller South American economies. The time frame covers 2020-2025

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and includes post-pandemic supply chain disruptions, as well as the latest regulatory and

certification changes that have impacted SME procurement activities.

The search in the literature was carried out in the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science,

SciELO, REDALYC, and LATINDEX. The Boolean operators were used to combine search terms and

they were: quality engineering, procurement quality, purchasing management, ISO 9001, supplier

evaluation, supplier selection, SME supply chain, supply chain quality management and Spanish

equivalents, narrowed down to South American geographic scope and publication date. The

snowball sampling was used to find more sources that were mentioned in the relevant papers but

were not included in the initial database search according to the principles of narrative review

methodology (13).

The bibliographic management was conducted with the help of Mendeley software that was able

to organize, deduplicate, and categorize references found in the databases. In the case of

inductive thematic coding, Microsoft Excel was applied, in which the open codes, emerging

categories and analytical memos were entered in a structured extraction matrix. Such a

combination of tools made it possible to systematize the analysis process and trace interpretative

decisions made at every of the three stages of the analytical process.

Inclusion criteria included: (a) studies had to be peer-reviewed and published in 2020-2025; (b)

studies had to be addressing procurement, purchasing, or supplier management processes within

the context of SMEs or other similar organizational units in South America; (c) studies had to be

discussing quality management frameworks, quality engineering tools, or quality performance

measurement; and (d) the studies had to be written in either Spanish, Portuguese, or English.

Research that looked at large multinational corporations, but whose results could not be applied

in SMEs, or those that looked at quality in production or product design, but not procurement,

were filtered out.

Exclusion criteria were also applied. Research that looked at large multinational corporations, but

whose results could not be applied in SMEs, or those that looked at quality in production or

product design, but not procurement, were filtered out.

The analysis procedure had three consecutive steps. To begin with, a descriptive extraction grid

was developed on every of the included studies, including: country of study, organizational type,

quality framework used, procurement dimension covered, major findings, and implementation

barriers reported. Table 1 summarizes this information. Second, the extracted findings were

subjected to inductive thematic coding, which produced open codes, which described particular

procurement quality phenomena, which were further grouped into higher-order categories via

constant comparison. Third, interpretive decisions were recorded by means of analytic memos

and conceptual overlaps were handled. The thematic categories that emerged were: First,

patterns of adoption of ISO 9001 in SME purchasing functions; second, supplier evaluation

methodologies and their applicability in context; and third, institutional and cultural limitations

to the implementation of procurement quality.

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Table 1. Corpus of studies included in this review.

Author(s) &

Year

Country

Org. Type

Quality

Framework

Procurement

Focus

Key Finding /

Contribution

Ovallos-

Gazabon et

al. (2022)

Colombia

Industrial SMEs

ISO

9001:2015

QMS in purchasing

depts.

Certification

pursued for access,

not improvement;

purchasing clauses

are the least

implemented.

Palacios-

Chacón et al.

(2021)

Ecuador /

Colombia

SMEs, mixed

sectors

ISO 9001 +

TQM

Supplier control

practices

Performative ISO

adoption leads to

weak supplier

control and

undocumented

purchasing criteria.

Rodriguez-

Borray &

Garzon

Colombia

Agri-food SMEs

SCQM

Supplier selection

Relationship-based

selection

dominates; formal

evaluation criteria

absent in 78% of

firms studied.

(2020)

Govindan et

al. (2023)

Multi-

country

(incl.

Manufacturing

SMEs

MCDA / AHP

Supplier evaluation

models

MCDA models

show promise but

require adaptation

for low-data

LATAM)

environments

typical of South

American SMEs.

Morocho-

Cayambe &

Tello-

Ecuador

Micro and small

firms

ISO

9001:2015

QMS

implementation

costs

Financial and

technical barriers

prevent sustained

QMS

Oquendo

(2023)

implementation in

procurement in

Ecuadorian SMEs.

Lozano-Reyes

et al. (2022)

Peru

Public

procurement /

SME suppliers

Quality audit

+ KPIs

Supplier quality

auditing

Public

procurement

quality audits

expose systemic

non-conformance

among SME

suppliers in Peru.

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Vargas-

Hernandez &

Flores (2021)

Bolivia /

Argentina

SMEs, diverse

sectors

TQM / Six

Sigma

adapted

Purchasing process

improvement

Lean procurement

tools reduce cycle

time but lack

quality metrics

integration in SME

contexts.

Alvarez-

Santos et al.

(2024)

Ecuador

SMEs,

manufacturing

Supplier

scorecard

Supplier

performance

measurement

Scorecard-based

supplier evaluation

reduces defect

rates but requires

ongoing staff

training to be

sustainable.

Note. Table 1 summarizes the eight primary studies included in the final corpus, organized by country of study,

organizational type, quality framework, procurement focus, and key contribution to the review themes.

RESULTADOS

ISO 9001 Adoption Patterns in SME Purchasing Functions

The most recurrent finding of the reviewed corpus is the difference between the ISO 9001

certification status and the actual level of implementation in purchasing and procurement

functions. A qualitative study of Colombian industrial SMEs moving to ISO 9001:2015 by Ovallos-

Gazabon et al. (2022) found that one of the least substantively applied clauses in the entire

standard is the section of the standard that regulates control of externally provided processes,

products, and services (Section 8.4) (3). Three main obstacles were identified by the authors: (a)

the lack of training, as the purchasing staff were not trained on how quality management

requirements could be applied in the purchasing activity; (b) the organizational culture that views

quality as a manufacturing floor issue and not a cross-functional issue that extends to the

purchasing department; and (c) the lack of integration of risk-based thinking in supplier

management, which the 2015 revision explicitly requires. These obstacles led to the purchasing

departments having a list of vendors without any evaluation criteria attached to them, and

meeting minimum documentation requirements without fulfilling the operational intent of the

standard.

Palacios-Chacacon et al. (2021) have expanded this analysis by conducting a comparative study

of certified SMEs in Ecuador and Colombia based on a framework that combines ISO 9001 with

TQM principles (5). Their results indicated that the use of ISO in SMEs is mainly performative:

companies seek certification as a condition of market access or an opportunity to compete in

open tenders, but not as a tool to actually enhance internal purchasing processes. In particular,

the authors have recorded that certified SMEs often did not have documented purchasing

procedures, approved supplier registers with assessment criteria and incoming material

inspection procedures. The lack of alignment between official certification and practice validates

the performative compliance hypothesis proposed in the theoretical framework.

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Morocho-Cayambe and Tello-Oquendo (2023) examined the impediments to the implementation

of ISO 9001:2015 in micro and small businesses in Ecuador, which is the most contextually specific

evidence (14). Their qualitative research found out that in both the purchasing and supplier

management functions, financial and technical barriers are overrepresented. They discovered

that staff buying in Ecuadorian micro and small firms were either poorly trained or poorly trained

in quality engineering principles, i.e. the purchasing decisions were made based on price and

availability, and not on conformance requirements or supplier capability evaluation. What is

more, the audit and consulting expenses, which are in US dollars because of the dollarized

economy in Ecuador, are a relatively greater financial liability compared to other countries in the

region that use local currencies. This finding can be explained by a larger regional trend: ISO 9001

is typically viewed as a mark of quality of production instead of a quality engineering system that

can be applied to the purchasing department.

Supplier Evaluation and Selection Models: Methodological Landscape.

The second thematic area shows that there is still a gap between the sophistication of supplier

evaluation models found in the academic literature and their applicability in the context of SMEs.

In a multi-country study by Govindan et al. (2023), Latin American manufacturing SMEs were

included, and it was discovered that multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) models, including the

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and TOPSIS, possess high potential in enhancing the objectivity

of selecting a supplier (6). Nevertheless, the research showed that they are very limited in their

use in data-scarce settings. South American SMEs do not usually have historical procurement

data, supplier performance data, and analytical abilities to apply complete MCDA models. The

authors came to the conclusion that the further research should be directed at the creation of

supplier assessment tools that would require less data but would maintain multi-dimensional

evaluation logic, which is directly applicable to the South American SME setting.

In Colombian agri-food SMEs, Rodriguez-Borray and Garzon (2020) described the process of

supplier selection in a very revealing way (7). Their research, which is based on the theory of

supply chain quality management (SCQM), revealed that 78 percent of the sampled companies

stated that they chose suppliers solely based on personal relationship and informal trust

networks, and no evaluation criteria were documented at all. This relational selection is not a

cultural accident, but a logical reaction to the institutional environment: in the case of a lack of

suppliers, high transaction costs, and poor enforcement of contracts, relationship-based selection

provides risk reduction that can hardly be achieved by formal standards. This observation

suggests that supplier evaluation models that are used in South American SMEs should not be

developed to substitute relational capital but instead complement it with systematic and

available quality signals.

Alvarez-Santos et al. (2024) partially filled this gap by introducing a supplier evaluation system in

the form of a scorecard in an Ecuadorian manufacturing SME (17). Their research has shown that

the implementation of formal supplier assessment criteria such as quality of materials, adherence

to delivery time and responsiveness to non-conformances resulted in a dramatic drop in the rate

of incoming material defects during a 12-month period. Nevertheless, another significant

limitation of the study was also the sustainability of such systems, which is directly related to the

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constant staff training and the commitment of the managers, which is limited by the high turnover

rates of employees and the lack of training opportunities in Ecuadorian SMEs. This point is why

the supplier evaluation models should be institutionally and technically viable.

Figure 2. Thematic convergence across the reviewed literature. The diagram illustrates the three interrelated

thematic areas identified in the corpus and their convergence in a central implementation gap.

Figure 2 shows the thematic convergence that has been found in the literature reviewed. The

figure shows the three thematic areas that are interrelated, namely: (1) the patterns of adoption

of ISO 9001 in SME purchasing functions, (2) supplier evaluation and selection models, and (3)

institutional and contextual constraints. The overlaps of these three themes help to identify the

essential dynamics: where theme 1 and theme 2 collide, it is possible to see that there is a lack of

use of procurement quality criteria; where theme 1 and theme 3 collide, it can be seen that

certification is achieved without a real change in the quality culture; and where theme 2 and

theme 3 collide, it can be seen that the sustainability of evaluation models depends on the

constant training of staff. The three tensions are brought together, and it is a central

implementation gap whereby, the structural disconnection between availed quality theoretical

frameworks and the operational application of these theoretical frameworks in South American

SME settings is manifested.

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Procurement Quality Constraints of an Institutional and Contextual Nature

The third thematic dimension is the institutional barriers that limit the implementation of quality

engineering practices in SME procurement in a structural way. Lozano-Reyes et al. (2022)

examined the quality audit in the Peruvian public procurement system and discovered that such

audits frequently expose the persistence of non-conformances in the system among SME

suppliers, especially in documentation, traceability, and incoming material inspection processes

(18). These non-conformances are not due to a lack of willingness but are attributed to structural

weakness: the majority of Peruvian SMEs do not have the organizational facilities needed to

satisfy the quality requirements of the public procurement contracts, i.e. the special quality

personnel, supplier management information systems and the accuracy of inspection equipment.

This scenario further propagates a vicious cycle whereby the quality requirements in the public

procurement processes lock out the informal and semi-formal SMEs in the public market and the

removal of these markets removes the external incentive to improve quality.

Vargas-Hernandez and Flores (2021) examined purchasing process improvement programs in

Bolivian and Argentine SMEs and discovered that, despite the effectiveness of Lean procurement

tools in improving the time of purchasing, they were implemented without quality engineering

models (19). These Lean programs did not include any quality measures and, therefore, the

efficiency gains were obtained at the cost of the quality control of incoming materials, which

resulted in the growth of disruption caused by defects at the later production stages. This

observation shows a severe lack of connection: South American SME improvement programs are

either procurement efficiency or quality oriented, but not both aspects have been combined to

develop a consistent quality engineering approach to the purchasing function.

In the corpus, the most widespread institutional constraint is supply chain informality. In Ecuador,

Peru, Bolivia and certain regions of Colombia, a significant percentage of SME suppliers are in the

informal sector, and this makes it structurally impossible to enforce standard quality certification

criteria, contractual quality terms or formal performance monitoring. This informality is not a

temporary state but a structural characteristic of South American SME supply ecosystems, which

needs quality engineering strategies that are tailored to heterogeneous partially formal supply

chains.

DISCUSIÓN

The generalization of results in the literature reviewed demonstrates a structural and conceptual

contradiction that lies in the core of procurement quality engineering in South American SMEs:

the existing frameworks are conceptually sound but out of context. The ISO 9001:2015 offers a

holistic structure of the procurement quality management and the MCDA models present

advanced methods of the supplier selection. However, both of them presuppose the

organizational conditions such as the quality-trained purchasing workforce, the database of

certified suppliers, the documented process history, and the specific quality infrastructure that is

not present in most of the South American SMEs under research. What has been achieved is a

chronic gap in implementation between quality engineering theory and procurement practice.

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There are two dimensions of this implementation gap that are mutually reinforcing. The former

is technical: South American SMEs do not have the human capital, information systems, and

analytical tools to put to practice formal quality engineering techniques in their purchasing

functions. The second is institutional: regulatory environments, certification systems and public

procurement systems in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia have not been structured in a way

that can incentivize or facilitate quality engineering in SME procurement. This institutional void is

consistent with the broader literature on institutional gaps in emerging market economies, where

the absence of supporting structures forces firms to rely on informal governance mechanisms

(20). Technical incapability coupled with institutional apathy forms a vicious circle whereby the

quality of procurement is informal, the efforts to improve quality are not sustained and isolated

and the costs of poor procurement quality are internalized instead of being dealt with.

Regarding Total Quality Management, the results indicate that the TQM concepts, especially the

focus on cross-functional quality responsibility and process-oriented management, are not

completely integrated into the South American SME procurement scenarios. The idea of

purchasing is still largely conceptualized as a transactional activity as opposed to a quality-

sensitive process, which deters the organizational culture change that is necessary to ensure

quality improvement in procurement. In terms of SCQM, the fact that upstream quality

integration, the foundation of supply chain quality management, is structurally unfeasible by the

informality and fragmentation of South American SME supply networks is evidenced.

The SCQM model presupposes that the quality integration with the suppliers up the chain is

developed on the basis of the formal relations, the history of the performance documented and

the mutual quality commitments. This theoretical position aligns with seminal work on supply

chain quality management, which emphasizes that quality outcomes are determined not only

within the firm but across inter-organizational boundaries (21). However, the results of this

review point to the fact that such preconditions are mostly lacking in South American SME

procurement settings. This is supported by the evidence presented by Rodriguez-Borray and

Garzon-Castrillon (2020), where 78 percent of Colombian agri-food SMEs choose suppliers based

on personal relations and informal trust, which proves that the relational capital is the basis of

supplier management operations, but not the formal quality criteria. This informality dependency

does not nullify the applicability of SCQM but instead requires its re-conceptualization to fit those

settings where quality assurance is essential, but where trust-based networks are present. The

positive outcomes of Alvarez-Santos et al. (2024) in which a simplified scorecard system

decreased the number of incoming material defects in an Ecuadorian SME are indicative of the

fact that hybrid methods that integrate relational procurement with structured but accessible

quality indicators could be the most feasible way toward upstream quality integration in the

region.

These tensions imply that the field does not only need to apply the available quality engineering

frameworks to the South American SME procurement, but also develop contextualized models

that are institutionally viable, culturally appealing and technically suitable to environments that

are informal, scarce in resources and have relational supply networks. Ecuador, with its large

population of SMEs and its institutional environment as a dollarized economy that is part of

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Andean regional trade flows, is a particularly significant and under-researched laboratory in the

development of such a contextual model.

Comparative analysis across regions shows that some of these barriers are common to all the

developing economies whereas others are regional. Bakhtiar et al. (2023) examined 1,000

organizations that were certified by ISO 9001 in Indonesia and discovered that the planning of

certification is not associated with the operational performance, but only in cases when

organizations have the internal culture of quality, the certification can be translated into the

measurable benefits. The deficiency in employee and managerial commitment was found to be

the major obstacle, which replicated the training-deficit and culture-gap results in South America.

Nonetheless, a key distinction presents itself: The economies of ASEAN enjoy the advantages of

the export-based supply chains where the global purchasers require quality certification as a

market access prerequisite, which provides external compliance incentive that is mostly lacking

in the South American supply chain, which is predominantly domestic. This was supported by

Nurcahyo et al. (2021), who showed that the impact of ISO 9001 on business performance in

Indonesian manufacturing SMEs is only indirect and mediated by operational improvements, that

is, the payback period of the quality systems is delayed and uncertain, which is one of the reasons

why the extension of quality systems to procurement functions is not eagerly accepted.

When it is compared to Sub-Saharan Africa, even greater difficulties can be seen. Tayo Tene et al.

(2018) reported that the African nations have about 1 percent of the global ISO certifications

despite a large proportion of the global SMEs, and found the lack of enforcement infrastructure,

paucity of resources, and cultural issues to be the main challenges. According to Magodi et al.

(2025), the rate of termination of ISO 9001 certification in Botswana was at 55% in 20 years and

micro and small businesses could not maintain the certification after two years. These trends are

representative of the sustainability issues in the Latin American region where quality systems in

purchasing functions are often abandoned following the initial implementation.

The cross-regional analysis brings to a significant conclusion that the obstacles to the quality of

procurement engineering in South American SMEs are not the regional deficiencies but the

structural features of the developing-economy SMEs worldwide. Nevertheless, they are

configured differently depending on the location - the dollarized economy of Ecuador, the export-

oriented incentives of Southeast Asia, and the cultural aspects of the African setting each

influence the quality engineering landscape differently, which helps to make the point that

frameworks should be institutionally and culturally localized, and not transplanted.

There are three directions that future research should focus on. To start with, multi-country

comparative studies that systematically report the procurement quality practices among SMEs in

Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia and the variation of the same as well as the structural

constraints that are common in the region would form the empirical basis of the development of

models. Second, intervention research would test simplified, contextually modified supplier

evaluation instruments in actual SME procurement settings, and measure sustainability

longitudinally would produce actionable evidence to practice and policy. Third, policy research

ought to look at how the systems of public procurement in Ecuador and other countries in the

region can be reformed to act as quality development mechanisms to the suppliers of SMEs,

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instead of acting as compliance costs to the informal and semi-formal suppliers that most South

American SMEs rely on. Figure 3 is a synthesis of the practical recommendations that emerge out

of this review to researchers, practitioners, institutions, and policymakers. Figure 3 is a synthesis

of the practical recommendations that emerge out of this review to researchers, practitioners,

institutions, and policymakers.

Figure 3. Practical recommendations for researchers, practitioners, institutions, and policymakers. The figure maps

the four-level integrated action framework for improving procurement quality engineering in South American

SMEs.

CONCLUSIONES

This narrative review has integrated peer-reviewed articles published between 2020 and 2025 on

the use of quality engineering tools, namely, ISO 9001 quality management systems and supplier

evaluation and selection models, to the procurement and purchasing functions of small and

medium-sized enterprises in South America. The review achieved its three aims: it reviewed the

patterns of ISO 9001 adoption in SME purchasing, it analyzed the environment of supplier

evaluation methodologies and their applicability to the context, and it found out the institutional

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and contextual limitations that influence the implementation of procurement quality in the

region.

The synthesis leads to three main conclusions. To begin with, the South American SMEs that are

certified with ISO 9001 have the most systematically weak interface at the procurement interface,

where the quality management requirements of the control of the external providers are either

implemented without depth or directly avoided because of the lack of training and the gap in the

organizational culture. The potential of the standard as a quality engineering tool to purchase is

yet to be fully achieved in the regional SME environment. Second, the models of supplier

evaluation and selection that are present in the academic literature are methodologically superior

and institutionally inapplicable to the majority of South American SMEs, which are in informal,

data-sparse supply settings, where relational capital fulfills the risk mitigation role that the formal

criteria cannot. Third, the informality of South American SMEs supply chains, the lack of a unified

certification system, and the procurement regulations that are oriented towards larger

organizations are key elements of the institutional ecosystem that the SMEs are operating within,

actively limiting the implementation of quality engineering practices in purchasing, which makes

the improvement initiatives isolated, unsustainable, and locally based.

The shortcomings of this review should also be noted. The geographic scope, however extensive,

is limited by the literal lack of literature: peer-reviewed research that specifically deals with

procurement quality engineering in Ecuadorian SMEs is virtually non-existent, and this review is

as much a mapping of the non-existent as a synthesis of the existent. The use of published

academic sources can also not capture the knowledge and experience of practitioners and

organizations that have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. Although small-scale case

studies offer a lot of contextual insight, they cannot be extrapolated to the heterogeneous SME

environment of South America.

To sum up, quality engineering in procurement and purchasing is not a luxury of South American

SMEs, but rather a structural requirement of competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of the

supply chain. The reviewed evidence shows that the tools and frameworks are available, but the

contextual conditions of its adoption are not yet. The only way to bridge this gap is through a

long-term, joint, and locally based research and policy agenda whereby Ecuadorian and South

American researchers, practitioners, and institutions are at the forefront and not wait that

structures elsewhere can be modified to suit their situations.

DECLARACIÓN DE INTERÉS

The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest in relation to this article. No funding or

support has been received from any organization or entity that could influence the content of this

work.

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CONTRIBUCIONES DE AUTOR (OPCIONAL)

Antus Jose: Conceptualization, literature search and screening, thematic analysis, writing (original

draft, review, and editing).

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