چشم انداز تئوری وابستگی به منابع در ایزو 9000 در مدیریت محیط سازمانی

More than 900,000 organizations worldwide have registered to the ISO 9000 quality management standard. Despite its growing popularity, few studies have offered a coherent theoretical basis for the standard's appeal. A theory-based explanation enhances understanding and appreciation for the standard, and provides clarity on how the standard benefits organizations. In this paper, we invoke the resource dependence theory (RDT) to purport that the standard is used by organizations as a tool to manage their organizational environment. It does this by specifying procedures that organizations need to manage their organization–environment boundary spanning processes. Using the RDT perspective, a model with three key constructs embodying ISO 9000 was developed: internal processes, relationships with customers and relationships with suppliers. The latter two were treated as being part of the task environment. We predicted that the external aspects of the standard affect operating performance (a measure of effectiveness), both directly and through internal processes. Empirical data from 416 ISO 9000 registered Australian manufacturing plants validated the RDT perspective, and suggest that the three constructs, individually and in isolation, are not as effective as when they are considered together. By invoking RDT, a new theoretical viewpoint to ISO 9000 has been developed that adds to other theoretical perspectives, and goes some way to explaining the growing popularity of this standard with organizations.

Since its inception, there has been a remarkable growth in organizations registering to the ISO 9000 quality management standard, with close to 900,000 registered organizations in existence in 170 countries (International Organization for Standardization, 2008). Many researchers have sought to understand why organizations choose to register. Much of this research is focused on internal justifications, with the spotlight on how the standard assists organizations to intrinsically improve their internal organizational processes and performance (Adams, 1999, Benner and Tushman, 2002, Benner and Tushman, 2003, Boiral, 2003, Tzelepis et al., 2006 and Benner and Veloso, 2008). Others have explained the organizations’ decisions to register from an external perspective (Anderson et al., 1999, Guler et al., 2002, Terlaak and King, 2006 and Clougherty and Grajek, 2008). This research stream has shown that some organizations register to comply with market expectations and regulatory requirements, and to improve their locational advantage. These studies suggest that the standard plays a dual role in addressing both internal and external functions. A close examination of the standard confirms this duality: the standard requires organizations to develop and implement procedures that ensure within-organization process variation reduction and control, as well as coordinative processes with key external stakeholders such as customers and suppliers. As such, it is evident that ISO 9000 extensively addresses both internal organizational processes and external organization–environment boundary spanning activities. Yet, a review of the literature shows that studies that address the dual nature are limited and lack a clear theoretical focus. Those that have (e.g., Boiral and Roy, 2007, Naveh et al., 2004, Naveh and Marcus, 2004, Naveh and Marcus, 2005 and Corbett et al., 2005) done so in an indirect manner and from a myriad of theoretical perspectives. The extant literature reveals an incomplete, fragmented and partial understanding of ISO 9000 registration. More importantly, few studies have examined and offered an integrative, theoretical exposition of the dual functionality of ISO 9000. In this study, we integrate the literature by proposing a theoretical basis that could account for its widespread interest. The theoretical basis is achieved through: (1) identification of a theory that integrates existing literature on the duality of ISO 9000; (2) development of a model based on the identified theory; and (3) empirical testing of the theory-based model. Given the internal and external perspectives of the standard, we invoke ideas from a body of knowledge that has hitherto been largely neglected, namely, the organization–environment relationships area. We propose that the resource dependence theory (RDT) is a suitable organization–environment relationships theory to explain the duality of ISO 9000. As described by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978), RDT proposes that organizations engage with their environment to obtain resources. The basic assumptions of RDT are that organizations are rarely internally self-sufficient with respect to strategically important resources, thereby leading to dependencies on other organizations (Heide, 1994); and organizations seek to reduce uncertainty and manage this dependency by carefully structuring their relationships with other organizations through formal and semiformal means (Ulrich and Barney, 1984). Invoking RDT, we posit that ISO 9000 is a tool that organizations use to deal with conditions in their organizational environment. Consistent with this theory, organizations use the standard to: make changes to their internal processes to adapt to their organizational environments; attempt to change their organizational environments; and do both of these if and when possible. We postulate that the standard plays facilitative internal and external roles in enabling organizations to deal with contingencies in their environment. This postulation is evaluated by analyzing the standard through the lens of RDT because, prima facie, there is a good fit between the phenomenon (i.e., ISO 9000) and the scope of the theory. As such, we identify the key constructs that embody the standard. We then develop a model that relates these constructs. The theory-based model was then tested for empirical validity with data from 416 Australian manufacturing plants that are ISO 9000 registered. Our study makes several useful contributions. By providing substantive theoretical grounding, we consolidate and enrich the literature on a popular management context (i.e., ISO 9000 registration). Our theory-driven approach creates a more rigorous and coherent understanding of the conceptual and practical aspects of ISO 9000 registration. The theory-based model depicting relationships between the internal and external process constructs offers prescriptive and managerial insights on the adoption of ISO 9000. Our study also illustrates the applicability of the RDT to a new context, thereby demonstrating an additional application of the theory.

This study attempts to provide a stronger theoretical basis for the registration and operation of the ISO 900 standard. As the standard focuses on internal processes and coordination with external stakeholders, we invoked RDT to explain the dual function of the standard. Our model and results suggest that RDT presents an appropriate organization–environment boundary spanning perspective of how the standard operates. Similar to that in Sroufe and Curkivoc (2008), our results suggest that ISO 9000 is a tool that organizations use for managing issues in their organizational environment. This study has several limitations that could be opportunities for future research. First, this study is based on an empirical setting consisting of mostly micro and small Australian manufacturing plants that are registered to the standard. Whilst it is possible to generalize the findings of this study to a greater population of Australian manufacturing companies, we are unable to establish if our findings can find applicability in other countries, industries, and organization sizes. Future studies could take a wider domain to improve generalizability of the results. Second, perceptual measures were used for all variables. Whilst strong justifications for this approach was provided, and a common methods test showed that bias was unlikely to be present, nonetheless, objective performance measures might provide fresh insights and interpretations. Future studies could thus examine these types of measures. Third, the effects of general business environmental conditions were not assessed. Future studies could examine the moderating influence of general business environmental conditions (along with others) on the effectiveness of the standard. Fourth, the study is based on monadic data obtained from focal organizations. While this is acceptable as the study sought to understand the actions and behaviors of focal organizations, future studies could adopt a triadic methodological stance whereby the external actions of the focal organization would be externally validated, thus providing richer insights. Fifth, the SEM goodness-of-fit indices for the hypothesized model, while suggesting adequate fit, could be improved upon. Future studies could attempt to improve measurement of constructs. Finally, the ISO has developed many other standards over time. Some are quality management standards customized to the needs of specific industry sectors (e.g., ISO/TS 16949:2002 for the automotive industry), while others are structurally modeled on ISO 9000, but address other functional areas (e.g., ISO 14000 environmental systems standard). Future studies could examine these ISO 9000 variant standards and test the applicability of our findings to the larger standard set. The proposed future studies would address the robustness of the findings of the current study.