Social enterprises, total quality management and quality management systems: A study of the ISO 9001:2015 implementation in Peru

Social enterprises are key actors in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, yet quality management remains largely neglected. Using a sample of 138 social enterprises, this study aims to evaluate their performance across nine critical dimensions of total quality management (TQM). The results show strong performance in the Leadership, Quality Audit and Assessment, Customer Satisfaction Focus, and Process Control and Improvement dimensions, while challenges remain in the other dimensions. Furthermore, ISO 9001:2015-certified enterprises exhibited significantly higher scores than non-certified enterprises across all dimensions. Finally, heterogeneity analyses reveal that performance varies according to enterprise size. Based on the results, actionable strategies are discussed.