Martí Casadesús

The benefits of the implementation of the ISO 9000 standard: empirical research in 288 Spanish companies

Since 1987, when the International Organization for Standardization accepted a series of quality norms – the ISO 9000 standards – large companies and small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) have been obliged to open their doors to something new: the culture of quality, a message which is very often associated with the initials of this well‐known standard. In Spain there are around 6,000 companies with this certificate, but they have not always obtained the same results. In this article we expose the results of an empirical research developed in 288 Spanish companies, to determine what the benefits are of the implementation of this standard. With a cluster analysis we found the existence of different typologies of companies. We found that nearly 65 per cent of the companies that have been certified in Spain have obtained very high levels of internal and external benefits.

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.

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.

Has ISO 9000 lost some of its lustre? A longitudinal impact study

Purpose – Seeks to analyze changes in the perceived benefits and costs of ISO 9000 implementation over time.Design/methodology/approach – Results of two surveys, performed in 1998 and 2002, with 283 and 399 Catalonian companies participating, respectively, are presented, compared and analyzed.Findings – There has been a significant decrease in the perception of ISO 9000 implementation benefits from 1998 to 2002. However, most companies still believe that ISO 9000 is beneficial overall. ISO 9000 implementation and maintenance costs have substantially decreased in the same four‐year period.Research limitations/implications – In July 2002, when the second survey was conducted, the majority of the participating companies were still registered to one of the old versions of the standard, namely ISO 9001/2/3:1994. The findings support the notion that ISO 9000 standards are limited in providing a set of concrete benefits over time.Practical implications – The outcome of the study contributes to a better understan...

The erosion of ISO 9000 benefits: a temporal study

Purpose – To analyze the changes in the perceived benefits of ISO 9000 with the passage of time.Design/methodology/approach – An empirical survey of 399 companies conducted in 2002 in Catalonia (region of Spain).Findings – ISO 9001: 2000 registered organizations report benefits to a lesser extent than their ISO 9001/2/3: 1994 registered counterparts across all studied benefit categories. Considering that the new standard is supposed to be a much improved version of the old one, these findings are then contrasted with the results of an almost identical survey performed in 1998. The discussion demonstrates that the perceived benefits of the ISO 9001/2/3: 1994 implementation have also decreased over time.Research limitations/implications – These findings may indicate that ISO 9000 will eventually fade away due to the lack of short‐term reasons to implement yet another version in the future, unless substantial long‐term benefits are proven. In July 2002, when this survey was conducted, the number of ISO 9001:...

The future of standardised quality management in tourism: evidence from the Spanish tourist sector

As quality management has become more important in the tourist sector, the implementation of standardised quality management systems has become more common in this industry. A forerunner in this development has been the Spanish tourist sector, in which 17 specific quality management standards have been developed over several years in various tourist sub-sectors, including hotels, rural accommodation, restaurants, spas, and travel agencies. The present study, which is exploratory in nature, analyses the diffusion of these standards using a model that has been well attested in the specialised literature, together with a qualitative analysis of three practical cases. The study concludes that the standardisation of quality management in tourism will increase in coming years. The worldwide diffusion of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in many service sectors and the findings of the present study with respect to the increasing implementation of the Spanish standards provide an indication of what is likely to happen in the service sector as a whole in most countries.

The impact of ISO 9001 standard and the EFQM model: The view of the assessors

The aim of this article is to evaluate the impact of both the ISO 9000 standard and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) self-evaluation model, the total quality management model most employed in Europe. In order to directly compare the results obtained by the two models, we analyse them together in the same temporal frame, using the same methodology, but in a new way, utilising a sample of independent assessors of quality management models. To this end, we first performed a number of objective analyses of data regarding the impact of the models, data obtained from the ISO and EFQM international organisations themselves. We then conducted a survey of 107 experienced and independent quality-management assessors, followed by a personal interview of various stakeholders involved in the adoption of the models. The results obtained pertain to the different motivations of organisations for implementing ISO 9000 standards and the EFQM model, the obstacles detected in this implementation, the degree to which both are actually adopted and the results of the models. In this article, we also highlight the differences in the way that the two models are adopted.

How improving quality improves supply chain management: empirical study

Purpose – Much has already been written about the effects of ISO 9000 standards on business performance, mostly supporting the notion that implementing a standardized quality management system is beneficial. That said, no studies have been made into the impact that the implementation of these regulations has had on improvements, if any, to supply chain management (SCM). This paper aims to give an initial outline on this subject.Design/methodology/approach – Using the five strategies proposed by Chandra and Kumar in 2000 that aimed at stimulating the implementation of correct SCM, along with an empirical study carried out in nearly 400 companies certified to ISO 9000 standard, how this quality assurance standard contributes to successful SCM implementation is analysed.Findings – From the obtained results, it is interesting to point out that not only those indicators which show clear improvements in the SCM have been found but also those aspects in which the companies themselves recognize their limitations....

Difficulties and benefits of integrated management systems

Purpose – In recent years, the number of management systems (MSs) has sharply increased. These MSs can be certified with, for example, the quality standard ISO 9001 or the environmental standard ISO 14001 and they can subsequently be integrated into one single, jointly managed system. The main purpose of this research is to study the relationships between the level of system integration, on one hand, and the difficulties encountered in the integration process, as well as the related benefits, on the other.Design/methodology/approach – Data for this study derive from a survey carried out in 76 organizations registered to, at a minimum, both ISO 14001:2004 and ISO 9001:2008 standards for quality and environmental MSs. A descriptive and an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) are provided. Additionally, structural equation modelling (SEM) is applied to the responses of these organizations to a mailed survey.Findings – From the results, the paper proposes a model of the difficulties related to systems integratio...

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.