ایزو 9001/2000 و ایزو 9000/1994 و مدیریت کیفیت جامع (TQM): بحث عملکرد بازبینی

The debate about the impact of ISO 9000/1994 on performance has been waging since its inception. While there is a general agreement regarding the positive impact of TQM on performance, there has been less agreement among the academics about the impact of ISO 9000/1994. Perhaps in response to such debate, the new ISO 9001/2000 has appeared purporting to be more in line with the TQM philosophy. As of now, how this 2000 version actually affects performance is yet to be explored. In this study, we compare the implementation of ISO 9000/1994 and ISO 9001/2000 as representing two different efforts to implement quality management practices. We evaluate its impact on company performance with a sample of 713 Spanish industrial companies. We also examine if the 2000 version of ISO is taking us closer to the implementation of TQM. Further, we depart from the past studies methodologically by considering performance as a formative construct rather than a reflective construct. Based on the mean and covariance structural (MACS) analyses, we conclude that ISO 9001/2000 certified companies do not perform noticeably better than ISO 9000/1994 or non-certified companies. However, we find that ISO 9001/2000 certified companies apply TQM at a higher level than ISO 9000/1994 certified companies, but whether they actually perform better is less clear.

ISO 9000 series of standards first emerged in 1987 as the torch-bearer of the standards for doing business in Europe. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), at the end of 2006 there were 897,866 certified companies in the world (www.iso.org). With a growing annual rate of 20% for the period, 1995–2006, the number of ISO certified companies has been growing at a rate far higher than the economic growth. The academia has certainly taken notice of this phenomenon. As of late 2008, the ABI/INFORM database alone contains 2484 references that include ISO 9000 in their title or abstract. The bulk of these papers address managerial issues surrounding the ISO standard and its effects on company performance. The Journal of Operations Management has published three seminal articles on the impact of ISO 9000 on company performance. The first paper appeared in 1997 (Terziovski et al., 1997) as one of the more rigorous studies analyzing this subject. In this paper, Terziovski et al. found that ISO 9000 had little or no impact on company performance. The authors used TQM as a moderating factor for the ISO–performance relationship. The second paper came in 2005 (Naveh and Marcus, 2005) addressing the same issue. They first reported ongoing debate regarding the effects of ISO standards on company performance. They then concluded that the way a company implements the standard is what introduces variations that distinguish one company from others in operating performance. The better a company uses the standard in daily practice and as a catalyst for change, the greater the operating performance from ISO implementation. The third paper is authored by Benner and Veloso (2008). They again highlight the existing debate between ISO 9000 and firm performance. They proposed a possible explanation for the previous contrasting results by differentiating the early adopters from late adopters. Financial performance advantages enjoyed by early adopters can disappear for the late adopters as more firms adopt and achieve similar generic improvements.

Our results extend the debate involving the ISO 9000's impact on company performance. Previous studies published in JOM analyzed the effect of ISO 9000/1994 in different performance variables. However, a new version of the standard was born in 2000 with apparent characteristics that would bring companies nearer to a TQM system—the latest version of the standard, the ISO 9001/2008, has not implied any important change in its philosophy. Scholars (Lee et al., 1999 and Zhu and Scheuermann, 1999) have argued that TQM offers a much more complete quality management system with clear implications for benefits, whereas the previous version of ISO 9000 reflects a mere quality assurance system. If this is true, companies that adopted the ISO 9001/2000 version of the standard should lead companies to a higher level of TQM practices and, consequently, better performance. Our hypotheses were developed along the lines of such reasoning. However, our empirical analyses do not corroborate exactly what was initially expected. Firstly, what we found was that companies certified by the 1994 and the 2000 version of the standard showed barely noticeable differences in the performance dimensions. ISO 9001/2000 certified companies had slightly better scores on unit product costs, design quality and customer's satisfaction, but these differences could not be considered significant. These differences were also small in comparison with non-ISO companies. In 2006, JOM published a special issue encouraging replication research underlying OM models and theories (volume 24, 2006). In that issue, Kaynak and Hartley (2008) affirmed that replication implies that results can be generalized with confidence, building the foundation for theory. Many previous studies have empirically analyzed the impact of ISO 9000 implementation on the company performance. At the moment, there is still lack of agreement about its benefits. In this regard, this paper attempted to shed light on this issue and push it a little further.