ISO 9001 economic impact in the companies' performance

Abstract

Despite all the studies carried out in order to analyze the impact of quality management systems implementation and certification over companies’ financial performance, conclusions reached so far have yet a contradictory nature. Some authors conclude that there is a positive relationship between ISO 9001 certification and companies’ financial improvement, while others do not find evidence to support such a relationship. Overall, no consistent evidence could therefore be found in the literature concerning the real ISO 9001 impact over companies’ business financial performance. Therefore, there seems to be room for conducting additional work in order to analyze: (1) what is the real ISO 9001 certification impact over business financial performance, if any; (2) if “quality organizations” are indeed more profitable and competitive than the others; (3) if companies that become certified base on internal motivations have different results, also from a financial perspective, as compared to the ones that become certified based mostly on external motivations. This paper describes the results obtained from studying the economic impact of quality management systems based on the case study methodology.