Registrations to the ISO 9000 standard have grown rapidly in recent years with 343,643 certificates in 150 countries at the start of 2000, a growth of 71,769 on the previous year, of which 23,900 were in Europe. This suggests that there is a wide‐spread belief in the business benefits of ISO...

Purpose – To analyze the changes in the perceived benefits of ISO 9000 with the passage of time. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical survey of 399 companies conducted in 2002 in Catalonia (region of Spain). Findings – ISO 9001: 2000 registered organizations report benefits to a...

Purpose – In recent years, the number of management systems (MSs) has sharply increased. These MSs can be certified with, for example, the quality standard ISO 9001 or the environmental standard ISO 14001 and they can subsequently be integrated into one single, jointly managed system. The main...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of the motivation to adopt International Standards Organization (ISO) 9001 on both the internalization of the standard, namely the active day-to-day use of its main underlying practices, and the benefits obtained from its...