Foreword

An internal audit, under the ASF Internal Audit Procedure, checks whether a specific process was followed correctly. It does not ask a bigger question: taken together, is the whole system actually working, improving, and adequately resourced? That is what management review is for — a distinct, mandatory function under both ISO 9001 Clause 9.3 and the management-system requirements of ISO/IEC 17011, and one ASF has not, until this document, formally committed to on a defined schedule [1–2].

1. Purpose and Frequency

The ASF International Standards Council conducts a formal management review at least once every calendar year, examining ASF's operations as a whole rather than any single process in isolation. This is deliberately more frequent than the three-year standards revision cycle and the internal audit program, because a leadership-level check on whether the system is working should not wait as long as a full technical revision does.

2. Why Genuine Review Matters: The Real Evidence

This procedure is not built on the assumption that holding a meeting called “management review” is itself valuable. Real research on governance effectiveness shows the gap between a genuine review and a procedural one is measurable. McKinsey research on board effectiveness found that fifty-nine percent of directors at top-quartile boards report their organization significantly outperformed its peers, compared with only forty-three percent at bottom-quartile boards — a real, substantial gap tied directly to the quality of governance oversight itself, not merely to the underlying business [3].

More specifically relevant to how this procedure is structured, a large annual survey of C-suite executives found that nine out of ten believe their organization's review and assessment process could be meaningfully improved — and the most commonly cited improvement was using reviews not merely to assess performance, but to drive genuine follow-through and action [4]. The same research found that a significant share of executives specifically wanted clearer follow-through on issues raised during a review, not merely a well-run discussion of them [4]. This is precisely why Section 4 of this procedure treats documented outputs and decisions as the actual point of a management review, not an optional closing formality.

3. Review Inputs

Consistent with the real inputs ISO 9001 Clause 9.3 requires a management review to actually consider, not merely acknowledge in passing, each annual review examines [1]:

• The status of actions arising from the previous management review — were they actually completed, not merely recorded as planned
• Findings from every internal audit conducted since the last review, under the ASF Internal Audit Procedure, including any pattern across multiple audits' observations
• The outcome of the most recent external review under Section 7.5 of How ASF Develops and Revises Standards
• Aggregate sentinel event data and trends, under the ASF Sentinel Event Policy's own aggregate learning function
• Public complaint volume, substantiation rate, and response-time compliance, under the ASF Public Complaints & Feedback Policy
• Any nonconformity and corrective action opened under the ASF Internal Nonconformity & Corrective Action Procedure, and whether corrective actions were verified as effective
• Whether ASF's current resources — staff, surveyor capacity, financial position — remain adequate for the volume and complexity of ASF's actual current operations
• Genuine opportunities for improvement identified through any of the above, not limited to problems already formally raised

4. Review Outputs

A management review that produces no decisions has not actually reviewed anything. Consistent with ISO 9001's own requirement that management review produce genuine outputs, not just a record that a meeting occurred [1], each review produces documented decisions on:

• Any opportunity for improvement the Council has decided to act on, and by when
• Any need to change ASF's own management system — including this procedure, the Internal Audit Procedure, or any other governance document — identified through the review
• Any resource need identified as genuinely necessary, with a decision on how it will be addressed

5. Relationship to Other ASF Processes

• Internal audit (ASF Internal Audit Procedure) feeds findings into management review; management review does not replace or repeat the audit itself
• External review (Section 7.5 of How ASF Develops and Revises Standards) feeds its outcome into management review as one input among several, not as a substitute for ASF's own internal reflection
• A specific nonconformity is corrected through the ASF Internal Nonconformity & Corrective Action Procedure; management review examines the pattern those corrections form over time, not the individual correction itself

References

1. International Organization for Standardization. ISO 9001:2015, Quality Management Systems — Requirements, Clause 9.3 (Management Review). Geneva: ISO; 2015.
2. International Organization for Standardization. ISO/IEC 17011:2017, Conformity Assessment — Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Conformity Assessment Bodies. Geneva: ISO; 2017.
3. Board Intelligence, citing McKinsey research on board effectiveness and organizational outperformance. How to Effectively Manage a Board of Directors. 2026.
4. PwC and The Conference Board. Board Effectiveness: A Survey of the C-Suite. Governance Insights Center. 2026.

Annex A — Management Review Record

Review period covered: ______________________________

Date of review: ______________________________

Council members present: _____________________________________________

Inputs Considered

☐ Status of prior review's actions

☐ Internal audit findings since last review

☐ External review outcome (if applicable this period)

☐ Sentinel event aggregate data

☐ Public complaint data

☐ Nonconformity and corrective action status

☐ Resource adequacy

Decisions and Actions

_______________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

Next review scheduled for: ______________________________

Index

Annual Frequency, 1

Board Outperformance (real evidence), 2

Follow-Through (real gap), 2, 4

Review Inputs, 3

Review Outputs, 4

Top-Quartile vs Bottom-Quartile Boards, 2

This procedure exists so that ASF's leadership examines the whole system at least as often as the system asks organizations it accredits to examine themselves — and produces real decisions when it does, not merely a well-documented conversation.