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

Purpose – Small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) constitute 90 percent of all enterprises in Iran. Thus they have an important role in the development of the country. SMEs need to utilise management systems, especially quality systems such as the ISO 9000 series, in their operations. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: to what extent do the performances of SMEs change before and after acquiring the ISO 9000 certification and how far do they differ from non‐ISO certified companies? Design/methodology/approach – The authors have studied a sample of SMEs, comprising those that have acquired the ISO 9000 certification after the end of September 2004 and were located in Greater Tehran. Based on the literature review, the authors designed the following methodology to survey the selected SMEs: they developed a questionnaire containing 27 questions relevant to advantages of acquiring ISO certification and sent the same to the selected SMEs; then analysed the responses and performed non‐parametric tests such as sign‐test and chi‐squared test; and they used Minitab and SPSS to analyse the data. Findings – Acquiring the ISO 9000 certification appeared to improve the performance of SMEs in the sample studied. In other words, SMEs have benefited from achieving the ISO 9000 certification. Originality/value – This paper will help the non‐ISO certified SMEs to consider investing in development and deployment of a suitable quality management system, preferably leading to certification under the ISO 9000 standard. It will also help the ISO‐certified SMEs to build on their success and move to apply a suitable performance assessment and improvement model such as the EFQM.