Iñaki Heras

ISO 9000 certification and the bottom line: a comparative study of the profitability of Basque region companies

Registrations to the ISO 9000 standard have grown rapidly in recent years with 343,643 certificates in 150 countries at the start of 2000, a growth of 71,769 on the previous year, of which 23,900 were in Europe. This suggests that there is a wide‐spread belief in the business benefits of ISO 9000 accreditation. However, failure to realise business performance improvement in practice could have a negative effect on the future credibility of quality certification and lead to ISO 9000 eventually becoming just another failed management panacea. Although there is much research describing implementation of ISO 9000 quality systems, there is little empirical research that examines whether ISO 9000 is linked to improvement in audited financial performance. This paper contributes to closing this gap in the literature by comparing the audited financial performance of 400 accredited and 400 non‐accredited Basque firms over a period of five years.

Benefits of ISO 9000 implementation in Spanish industry

The ISO 9000 standard for quality management systems was accepted by the International Organisation for Standardisation in 1987. Since then, large companies and SMEs have been obliged to open their doors to something new, “the culture of quality”, a message that is very often associated with the initials of this well‐known standard. Currently, there are more than 6,000 companies with this certificate in Spain, but they have not always obtained the same results. This paper gives the results of empirical research into 502 Spanish companies to determine the benefits of the implementation of this standard. By means of cluster analysis it was found that different typologies of companies exist. Also, nearly 65 per cent of the companies certified in Spain have obtained substantial internal and external benefits.

Shedding light on causation between ISO 9001 and improved business performance

ISO 9000 Management Systems adoption (QCert) has proven to be a persistent and growing phenomenon, yet to date little research has been done that can safely attribute improved business performance benefits to it. The paper examines the evidence for the causal links between QCert and improved performance in the empirical literature. Tests for attribution of performance improvement are proposed that analyze, effect, cause and effect size and these are illustrated to show how they influence the interpretation of results. The attribution testing method is then used to interpret the results of two USA and two European longitudinal studies and the analyses show that reverse causation is a major mechanism that explains the superior performance of the certified firms. The analyses cast doubt on any inference of attribution being drawn from the broad literature that finds an association of ISO 9000 accreditation with better business performance since it indicates that the strongest direction of causality is that firms with superior performance are more likely to have certification, not that certified firms are more likely to have superior performance. The findings have profound implications for the interpretation of causation in the substantial literature that shows QCert is associated with improved business performance. For researchers the paper provides a logic for testing the influence of reverse causation on results and demonstrates the potential confusion of attribution in research designs that can only infer causation.

ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 standards: A projection model for the decline phase

During the past few years, the process of standardisation with regard to business management systems has accelerated in an economic environment characterised by a marked process of economic globalisation and integration. Thus, the peaks attained by some standards published by agencies specialising in standardisation in the economic field are noteworthy. Two series of standards issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) stand out amongst these: the ISO 9000 series, related to the implementation of quality systems, and the ISO 14000 series, related to the implementation of environmental management systems. Previous research has analysed different projection models regarding number of certificates, both nationally and internationally, with the logistic model standing out as one of the models better suited to data records, and thus believed to offer better outlooks. However, none of the models referred to included data on countries experiencing clear decertification in terms of number of certificates of the aforementioned standards in their calculations, such as the data that has been detected for the first time in the last two years. Faced with the appearance of the first symptoms of market exhaustion, this article discusses what the projection model could be like once a process of decertification has set in.

Integration of standardized management systems: does the implementation order matter?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the order or the strategy of management system standards (MSSs) implementation in an organization determines the level of integration of its standardized MSSs.Design/methodology/approach – Groups of organizations that follow different implementation sequences have been obtained descriptively using a sample of 435 Spanish organizations, registered to two MSSs (ISO 9001 and ISO 14001) at the minimum. Differences with respect to the size of the organizations are also studied.Findings – The results obtained show six different groups of organizations that follow different sequences of implementation and that have different levels of integration of their MSSs. Among the more interesting findings, organizations that had implemented quality and environmental MSSs simultaneously and have 50 employees or less achieve higher levels of integration compared to other organizations in the sample.Originality/value – The paper analyses those sequences of management...

Synergies in standardized management systems: some empirical evidence

Purpose – Management system standards (MSSs) have spread in an unprecedented manner in the last few years. Thus, there are now many companies that rely on more than one such standard to establish the criteria for organizational management systems (MSs). The objective of this article is to analyze the existence of possible synergies in the application of a wide range of MSSs through an examination of the benefits obtained from the implementation of one particular MSS, namely ISO 9001.Design/methodology/approach – The starting point is a set of results from an empirical survey of more than 500 Spanish companies. Specifically, the differences between the benefits recognized by companies implementing a single MSS, namely ISO 9001:2000 for quality MSs, and those that implemented a second standard, in this case ISO 14001:2004 for environmental MSs, are discussed. An additional comparison is made between those organizations that have integrated the two MSSs into a single MS and those organizations that have deve...

Certification intensity level of the leading nations in ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 standards

Purpose – As the process of standardisation in all aspects of business management has accelerated in recent years in an environment characterised by economic globalisation and integration, two series of standards issued by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) stand out: the ISO 9000 series, related to the implementation of quality systems; and the ISO 14000 series, related to the implementation of environmental management systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the evolution of both standards in the leading countries in these certifications.Design/methodology/approach – It is noteworthy that the same few nations consistently occupy the highest rankings in both the number of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 series certifications. These countries are also those with highest growth rates in certifications. The present study examines these phenomena in terms of: a proposed new index for measuring the “certification intensity”; and a proposed model to analyse how standards are di...

ISO 9001 and residential homes for the elderly: a Delphi study

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to assess the appropriateness of applying the ISO 9001 quality standard to the residential aged‐care sector.Design/methodology/approach – The study undertakes a prospective qualitative survey using the Delphi methodology. A panel of 14 experts in the field constitutes the panel.Findings – ISO 9001 has certain shortcomings in the context of the residential aged‐care sector. There is a need to fit generic quality‐management models to the specific characteristics of the sector, and to integrate those generic quality management models with specialised models.Practical implications – Managers of residential aged‐care services should ensure: that they have sufficient resources to implement quality‐management models; that all personnel are involved in the implementation; and that generic models are appropriately adapted to the specific needs of the aged‐care sector.Originality/value – The paper provides an original conceptual overview of the application of a generic quality...

Is implementing multiple management system standards a hindrance to innovation

This paper addresses the question of whether multiple management system standards (MSSs) such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 hinder innovation processes. Following a review of the relevant literature, an empirical study of 249 Spanish organisations registered to both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 is presented. The principal finding of a previous study [Castillo, S.M., Casadesus, M., Karapetrovic, S., Heras, I., & Martin, I. (2008). Do standardized management systems hinder innovation processes, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Quality Conference – Quality Festival 2008, Kragujevac, Serbia (also appeared in the International Journal of Quality Research, 2(2), 121–127] is a decrease in the importance attached to the statement that MSSs hinder innovation as more of these standards are considered for implementation in the future. The model presented in this paper includes data from organisations that have not just implemented, but have also integrated their standardised management systems (MSs). This model investigates the effects of specific motivators and difficulties of implementing multiple MSSs on the responses of organisations to the statement that MSSs are seen as a barrier to innovation. The model also examines the effect of MSSs as a barrier to innovation on the intention of these organisations to implement MSSs in the future. Results show significant influence for the variables studied.

Impacto competitivo de las herramientas para la gestión de la calidad

Resumen En este articulo se evalua el impacto de las herramientas para la gestion de la calidad en la competitividad de las organizaciones, tomandose como referencia dos modelos distintos de gestion de la calidad: el establecido por el estandar ISO 9001:2000 y el del modelo de autoevaluacion EFQM. A tal efecto se analiza la informacion proveniente de un estudio empirico en el que participaron 107 evaluadores de modelos de gestion de la calidad. De los resultados obtenidos se observa que las organizaciones con sistemas de gestion de la calidad basados en la norma ISO 9001:2000 utilizan mayoritariamente herramientas de proposito «general», disenadas para el analisis de su situacion y para extraer propuestas de mejora, lo que tiene un impacto relativamente positivo en su competitividad. Por otra parte, las organizaciones que adoptan el modelo EFQM utilizan herramientas mas especializadas y focalizadas, lo que les lleva a una mejora notable en aspectos mas concretos de su capacidad competitiva. La clasificacion de herramientas para la mejora de la calidad que se propone en el articulo podra servir de apoyo a las organizaciones interesadas a la hora de escoger las herramientas mas efectivas en funcion de la estrategia de calidad que adoptan.