Quality standards development in a hypercompetitive scenario

Standards play an increasingly important role in the development of the “global village”, both from the economic and the quality of life perspective. However, development of standards should always be in tune with the needs of a free economy, whose main engine is differentiation. Standardization and differentiation can be complementary, but only to the extent that a correct balance between the two is kept. The balance becomes particularly delicate when standards move from product‐related issues to organization‐related issues, as is the case of quality system standards. Starting from a brief review of ISO 9000 and its role in the past decade, then moving to Vision 2000, the paper expresses reservations about the benefits and opportunity for standards to enter the organizational improvement area. In a situation of continuous change and global competition, differentiation seems to be the name of the game, more than standardization. Instead, a kind of “standards syndrome” seems to take place, where standards are expected to legitimize managers’ choices.