Abstract This paper describes how the standardization essentially, rather than referring to goals, outputs and outcomes, addresses duties, roles and actions, while eventually the latter ones affect and empower the former. The quest for quality is still on-going in pursuit of effectiveness and efficiency combined with social responsibility, as long as it is dependent upon societies’ willingness to change the world and share a better future. Although organizations have a long way to walk toward synergism and integration, quality management is being transformed from compliance to collaboration driven. The wide range of standards implementing the quality management systems based on ISO 9001 materializes its strategic direction to be functionally adapted to specific sectors and industries. On the other hand, plenty of later standards deal with the additional requirements that are applicable only to specific industries. They surely carry pros and cons. There is, however, a threatening likelihood that the relevant markets would reject some of the standards in case multiple standards overlap each other, creating complex bureaucratic burdens. Health and Safety standards are a success story against such concerns, while a plethora of Control and Risk management standards compete each other, which may be perceived more as a source of creativity rather than confusion.