Study: Companies, employees benefit directly from ISO 9001

[vanputten]

Did the authors of the paper state a cause - effect related to their findings?

What is the control group for the study?

I would suggest a critical read of the paper for statements of cause - effect.

 

[BradM]

An interesting note from the paper:

Nearly 900,000 organizations in 170 countries have adopted the ISO 9001 Quality Management
System standard.1 This is a remarkable figure given the lack of rigorous evidence regarding the standard’s
effect on organizational practices and performance

A thumbnail sketch of their purpose/scope:

This paper reports the first large-scale empirical evaluation of how workers’ outcomes change with
employers’ adoption of ISO 9001, focusing in particular on employment, total payroll, average annual
earnings, and workplace health and safety. We also examine outcomes of importance to company
managers and owners such as whether ISO 9001 is associated with subsequent sales growth and longerterm
company survival

Their control group:

Matching is widely used to construct a quasi-control group based on similar characteristics to those of
the treatment group (Heckman, Ichimura, and Todd 1998). Intuitively, we want to compare companies
that adopt ISO 9001 to industry peers with similar pre-adoption sales, employment, payroll, injury rates,
and other observable factors.

General results:

Critics of ISO 9001 and related programs who express concern that benefits to employers derive
largely from the deskilling and routinization of tasks hypothesize that employer gains consequently come
at the expense of employees’ earnings. Our results showing total payroll to rise faster than employment,
which implies an increase in average annual earnings, do not provide evidence of deskilling.

A fairly rigorous paper. They do outline the weaknesses, too.

Bottom line: coupled with other ISO 9001 papers and even coupled with older TQM papers, organizations with these QMS programs fare better than ones that don't have them.

 

[Richard Pike]

From http :// www .an ab.org/news/2010/2010/03/companies-benefit-from-iso-9001.aspx - OBSOLETE BROKEN 404 LINK(s) UNLINKED - PLEASE HELP - REPORT POSTS WITH BROKEN LINKS

An A Typical example that depending on what results you require, facts can be distorted to provide any result required.
In my opinion - what an absolute load of rubbish !

 

[Stijloor]

An A Typical example that depending on what results you require, facts can be distorted to provide any result required.
In my opinion - what an absolute load of rubbish !

Can you explain specifically what you consider "rubbish?"
Enlighten our Members please.

Stijloor.

 

[BradM]

An A Typical example that depending on what results you require, facts can be distorted to provide any result required.
In my opinion - what an absolute load of rubbish !

No decent researcher will ever be on the path to finding the perfect cure, the one answer, the one paper to end all papers. And if one is always looking at published research as needing to be perfect, to answer every question, etc., nothing would ever get published. How are we ever going to learn anything as a society if no one is advancing knowledge?

The authors looked at the problem, covered previous literature, clearly developed experimental controls, listed their limitations, and interpreted the results with inferences consistent with the strength of their data.

No researcher will ever have the time, money and luxury to perform experimental studies like they wish. They must build the best case they can, with what they have.

This is another of many published papers that show there is something significant about having a QMS in an organization.

 

[Richard Pike]

Can you explain specifically what you consider "rubbish?"
Enlighten our Members please.

Stijloor.

I detect the and perhaps is justified.

No:- I am not going to get involved in a line by line critique because (in my opinion) that is simply going to add credibility where none is due.

I am referring to the general purpose of the paper and the obvious manipulation of, in many cases, the lack of facts, used to support a very gray objective.

Sorry you don,t agree with my comment, however I personally am of the opinion that many of these papers do nothing more than advertise the lack of cohesion that exists in our profession such as exists in few others.

 

[BradM]

I detect the and perhaps is justified.

No:- I am not going to get involved in a line by line critique because (in my opinion) that is simply going to add credibility where none is due.

I am referring to the general purpose of the paper and the obvious manipulation of, in many cases, the lack of facts, used to support a very gray objective.

Sorry you don,t agree with my comment, however I personally am of the opinion that many of these papers do nothing more than advertise the lack of cohesion that exists in our profession such as exists in few others.

Ok, fair enough. Each is entitled to their opinions. However, it lends substantially more credence to your position if you could provide some rationale why this paper (Harvard professors I think) is complete rubbish.

So... in your opinion, are there supposed to be papers published on quality programs? How are they to be designed? Who is to publish them? What are they to say? Who is to lead the quality movement into the future?

I mean those sincerely. What path are we supposed to go down, if in your opinion, the mentioned article is completely missing it?

 

[Jim Wynne]

I detect the and perhaps is justified.

No:- I am not going to get involved in a line by line critique because (in my opinion) that is simply going to add credibility where none is due.

I am referring to the general purpose of the paper and the obvious manipulation of, in many cases, the lack of facts, used to support a very gray objective.

Sorry you don,t agree with my comment, however I personally am of the opinion that many of these papers do nothing more than advertise the lack of cohesion that exists in our profession such as exists in few others.

I tend to view these things with a heavy dose of skepticism, but I at least read and understand before criticizing.

As I suggested in my initial post in this thread, I think the fatal component of the study is a false dichotomy, that being the division of certified and non-certified companies without regard for the existence of non-certified companies that are (a) compliant with ISO 9001 or (b) performing well without adherence to any sort of standard.

I think we can all agree that implementation of a rigorous QMS is a good thing. There were high-performing companies long before ISO 9001 existed, and perhaps there are more of them now that the idea of standardization has taken hold. That doesn't mean, however, that certification is a causal factor, or that all else being roughly equal, that a certified company's output will be more consistently compliant than that of a non-certified company.

 

[BradM]

I tend to view these things with a heavy dose of skepticism, but I at least read and understand before criticizing.

As I suggested in my initial post in this thread, I think the fatal component of the study is a false dichotomy, that being the division of certified and non-certified companies without regard for the existence of non-certified companies that are (a) compliant with ISO 9001 or (b) performing well without adherence to any sort of standard.

I agree. It is one of the limitations of the study. If it would get published, a study within a smaller sample selection that possibly measured the magnitude of the QMS implementation, and see how it correlates with the other performance measures. It would be hard to do, but interesting.

I think we can all agree that implementation of a rigorous QMS is a good thing There were high-performing companies long before ISO 9001 existed, and perhaps there are more of them now that the idea of standardization has taken hold. That doesn't mean, however, that certification is a causal factor, or that all else being roughly equal, that a certified company's output will be more consistently compliant than that of a non-certified company.

In general, I agree with you. It's the old "Smoking causes cancer" argument. However, I think given the number of studies across so many different industries, time frames, researchers and such that have found a significant, positive relationship, there is probably something there.

But to your point, the studies that find no significant relationship don't get published, or weak relationships, which get published in low-level journals. Thus, they have to manipulate something (to Richard's point) so they get significant research findings.

Ah, the Publish or Perish of academic life.

 

[Stijloor]

I detect the and perhaps is justified.

No:- I am not going to get involved in a line by line critique because (in my opinion) that is simply going to add credibility where none is due.

I am referring to the general purpose of the paper and the obvious manipulation of, in many cases, the lack of facts, used to support a very gray objective.

Sorry you don,t agree with my comment, however I personally am of the opinion that many of these papers do nothing more than advertise the lack of cohesion that exists in our profession such as exists in few others.

No, no sarcasm intended. But when blanket statements are made, I (as a Forum Moderator), owe it to our Members to request some additional facts that support the statement. I would consider this fair in light of this very important topic.

Stijloor.