Business & Management Studies

Abstract

ISO 9001 Quality Standard is a series of internationally accepted guidelines as to how companies should set up their quality management systems. Certification to this quality standard is accepted worldwide and helps companies to operate successfully in a global economy. There has been considerable debate in the literature as to whether or not the certification has a positive impact on the organizational effectiveness. The objective of this study is to empirically estimate the impact of certification on the performance of factors that measure organizational effectiveness such as profitability, productivity and customer satisfaction. Survey data was used for this study. Samples of 500 companies each from US, and the BRIC nations Brazil, Russia, India and China were selected for this study. Hypotheses on the impact of certification on individual factors were tested and the results presented in the paper.