Recent years have seen the development and application of what are known as "generic management system standards", where "generic" means that the standards' requirements can be applied to any organization, regardless of the product it makes (or whether the "product" is actually a service activity), and "management system" refers to what the organization does to manage its processes.

Two of the most widely known series of international standards falling into this category are almost certainly the ISO 9000 series for managing quality systems, and the ISO 14000 series for environmental management systems.