The impacts of acquiring ISO 9000 certification on the performance of SMEs in Tehran

The performance of SMEs in Iran is researched in ‘The impact of acquiring ISO 9000 certification on the performance of SMEs in Tehran‘ (Bayati, Taghavi, 2007). The data was collected from a questionnaire sent to SMEs (<151 staff) certified to ISO 9000. The main finding of the research was ‘Acquiring ISO 9000 certification has improved the performance of SMEs’.

The study put forward a main hypothesis that ‘There is a meaningful relationship between acquiring ISO 9000 certification and the performance of SMEs’. This central hypothesis was accepted, supported by the results of eight further hypotheses which asked if… ‘There is a meaningful relationship between acquiring ISO 9000 certification and…

1. Business improvement of SMEs – accepted
2. Quality improvement of SMEs – accepted
3. Cost reduction of SMEs – to some extent
4. Proper use of resources in SMEs – to some extent
5. Documentation and standardisation of procedures in SMEs – accepted
6. Increasing customer satisfaction in SMEs – accepted
7. Increasing organisation quality awareness – accepted
8. Teamwork and organisation communication improvement in SMEs – accepted

The report ‘demonstrated that the performance of small-to-medium sized enterprises within the Greater Tehran area has been improved after acquiring ISO 9000 certification. In other words, the SMEs within greater Tehran area have benefited from the respective internal and external advantages of introducing ISO 9000 certification’.

Reference

• Bayati, A., Taghavi, A., (2007), ‘The impact of acquiring ISO 9000 certification on the performance of SMEs’, The TQM Magazine, Volume 19, Issue 2, pp 140-149.

Project Management R&D Centre, PIDMCo, Tehran (Bayati); The Islamic Azad University, Tehran (Taghavi)