The ABC’s of ISO Certification

30 May ’05

Inc. magazine has a very thorough article on the process, pros and cons of ISO certification. The article asks whether or not the high cost and difficulty of obtaining certification are worth it. Quote:

Three years ago, ISO’s own journal, ISO Management Systems, published a study that tracked the effects of ISO 9000 certification on public companies over a 10-year period. The authors concluded that firms that were certified tended to do better than firms that were not. But they also wrote that certification “is more often a necessary condition to maintain current [financial] performance rather than a sure-fire way to improve performance.” A 2002 study by the journal Total Quality Management was more pointed, finding that “ISO 9000 certification has a very limited impact on financial performance, as measured by return on assets; however, this effect dissipates quickly over time.”

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