Global Diffusion of ISO 9000 Certification Through Supply Chains

The ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards is widely diffused, with over 560,000 sites certified in 159 countries (as of December 2002). Anecdotal evidence suggests that global supply chains contributed to this diffusion, in the following sense. Firms in Europe were the first to seek ISO 9000 certification. They then required their suppliers to do likewise, including those abroad. Once the standard had thus entered other countries, it spread beyond those firms immediately exporting to Europe to be adopted by many other firms in those same countries. This paper empirically examines the validity of this view of the role of supply chains in global diffusion of ISO 9000. We formulate a series of four requirements that must be met in order to be able to claim that supply chains contributed to the global diffusion of ISO 9000. We then use firm-level data from a global survey of over 5000 firms in 9 countries to test the hypotheses that correspond to these requirements. Our findings are consistent with the view that ISO 9000 did diffuse upstream through global supply chains. In short, this means that firms that export goods or services to a particular country may simultaneously be importing that country’s management practices. We conclude by speculating on how these findings might apply to the environmental management systems standard ISO 14000.