ISO 9001:2026 Clause 5: Leadership
Published October 23, 2026
Clause 5 of ISO 9001:2026 makes top management accountable for the effectiveness of the QMS. Leaders must connect quality management to the way the business operates, support people, provide resources and maintain customer focus. The 2026 edition explicitly includes promoting quality culture and ethical behavior.
5.1 Leadership through everyday decisions
Top management needs to establish a quality policy and objectives compatible with the organization’s direction, integrate QMS requirements into business processes and ensure that the resources are available. It must support people and relevant management roles, promote improvement, and ensure that the system achieves its intended results.
Leadership also includes promoting the process approach, risk-based thinking and opportunity-based thinking. For example, a manager deciding whether to introduce a new service should consider both possible delivery failures and opportunities to meet customer needs more effectively.
Attendance at an audit is not enough to demonstrate leadership. Resource decisions, follow-through on problems, and the way managers respond to quality concerns are practical indicators of their involvement.
Promote quality culture and ethical behavior
Clause 5.1.1 explicitly requires leaders to promote quality culture and ethical behavior. In practice, this concerns the values and behavior people experience at work: whether quality concerns are taken seriously, records reflect reality, and employees receive support when they raise a problem.
For example, if a shipment has not passed its required checks, a leader should support an appropriate release decision rather than encourage someone to sign off checks that were never performed. This is an illustration of applying the requirement, not a prescribed ISO procedure.
A statement of values can help, but it does not replace consistent management behavior. The standard does not prescribe a particular ethics course or a separate ethics manual.
Keep customer focus in management decisions
Top management must ensure that customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements are understood and consistently met. It also needs to ensure that risks and opportunities affecting conformity and customer satisfaction are addressed, while maintaining a focus on enhancing satisfaction.
Look beyond complaint counts. Repeated delivery changes, unclear specifications or difficult after-sales support may indicate a customer issue even when no formal complaint has been received.
5.2 Establish and apply the quality policy
The quality policy must suit the organization’s purpose, take its context into account and support its strategic direction. It provides a framework for quality objectives and includes commitments to applicable requirements and continual improvement.
Keep it documented, communicate it internally and make it available to relevant interested parties as appropriate. People need to understand and apply it. A short policy connected to decisions and objectives is more useful than a statement employees cannot explain.
5.3 Assign responsibilities and authority
Assign and communicate responsibility and authority for QMS conformity, process results, customer focus, performance reporting, improvement opportunities and preserving the system’s integrity when changes are made.
A quality manager or coordinator can organize this work. ISO 9001 does not require a role titled “management representative,” and appointing a coordinator does not transfer top management’s accountability for QMS effectiveness.
For the bigger picture, return to the ISO 9001:2026 requirements overview. For structured learning, explore our ISO 9001 online training. Check the standard edition shown on each course page before enrolling.
Based on ISO 9001:2026, Quality management systems — Requirements. Clause 5 explained in practical terms. Use the standard itself for the complete requirements. Examples illustrate possible approaches, not additional ISO requirements.
