Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers
Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Mgt. Unit Research Paper No. 09-018
Management Science, Forthcoming
46 Pages Posted: 20 Aug 2008 Last revised: 14 Jun 2014
Date Written: January 19, 2010
Abstract
Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 Quality Management System standard predicts changes in organizational outcomes such as profits. This is the first large-scale study to explore how employee outcomes such as employment, earnings, and health and safety change when employers adopt ISO 9001. We analyzed a matched sample of nearly 1,000 companies in California. ISO 9001 adopters subsequently had far lower organizational death rates than a matched control group of non-adopters. Among surviving employers, ISO adopters had higher growth rates for sales, employment, payroll, and average annual earnings. Injury rates declined slightly for ISO 9001 adopters, although total injury costs did not. These results have implications for organizational theory, managers, and public policy.
Keywords: ISO 9001, quality management, standards, occupational health and safety, wages, labor, empirical, California
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