Abstract Periodically, organizations need to change the quality management aspects of processes and products in order to suit the demands of their internal and external (consumer and competitor market) environments. In the context of the present study, quality management changes involve tools, programs, methods, standards and procedures that can be applied. The purpose of this study is to help senior management to identify types of change and, consequently, determine how it should be correctly conducted within an organization. The methodology involves a classification model, with multicriteria support, and three organizational change ratings were adopted (the extremes, type I and type II, as confirmed in the literature, and the intermediary, proposed herein). The multicriteria method used was ELECTRE TRI and the model was applied to two companies of the Textile Local Productive Arrangement in Pernambuco, Brazil. The results are interesting and show the consistency and coherence of the proposed classification model.