Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers

With many studies examining the corporate benefits of of certifying to a management system standard, ‘Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standards for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers‘ (Levine, Toffel, 2010) takes a different angle. Their research examines how the outcomes on employees change when employers adopt ISO 9001. The research is based an analysis of nearly 1000 companies in California.

The report’s conclusion summarises the five key impacts:

‘1. ISO adopters had far lower organizational death rates than matched firms within their industries.

2. Sales and employment grew substantially more rapidly after certification at firms that adopted ISO 9001 than at matched firms.

3. Total payroll and (to a lesser extent) annual earnings per employee grew substantially more rapidly after certification at firms that adopted ISO 9001 than at matched firms.

4. Some benefits of ISO 9001 adoption were much more pronounced in smaller firms than in larger firms.

5. ISO 9001 adopters already had slightly lower than average injury costs at the time of adoption, and we found no evidence that this gap widened or narrowed after adoption’.

Paper available to purchase

Reference

• Levine, D.I., Toffel, M.W., (2010), ‘Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers’, Management Science, Vol. 56, No. 6, pp 978-996.

Haas School of Business, University of California (Levine); Harvard Business School, Harvard University (Toffel)