We employ the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data collected from 2006-2011 for over 40,000 firms in 115 countries to study the effect of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification on firm performance measured by sales growth and labor productivity. Our results from both the univariate tests and multivariate regressions show that ISO-certified firms exhibit higher sa...

Component-based software development is becoming more generalized, representing a considerable market for the software industry. The perspective of reduced development costs and shorter life cycles acts as a motivation for this expansion. However, several technical issues remain unsolved before software component’s industry reaches the maturity exhibited by other component industries. Problems ...

The number of hemodialysis patients and dialysis facilities is increasing each year, but there are no surveillance programs validating that the services and equipment of each hemodialysis unit meet specified safety and quality standards. There is a concern that excessive competition and illegal activities committed by some dialysis facilities may violate patients' right to health. Contrastingly...

Generally, information provision and certification have been identified as the major economic functions of rating agencies. This paper analyzes whether the “watchlist” (rating review) instrument has extended the agencies’ role towards a monitoring position, as proposed by Boot, Milbourn, and Schmeits (2006). Using a data set of Moody’s ratings between 1982 and 2004, we find that the overall inf...

The medical training model is currently immersed in a process of change. The new paradigm is intended to be more effective, more integrated within the healthcare system, and strongly oriented towards the direct application of knowledge to clinical practice. Compared with the established training system based on certification of the completion of a series or rotations and stays in certain health...

There has been a major emphasis for manufacturing firms in Australia and New Zealand to seek certification to the International Quality Standards ISO 9000. These have been rapidly accepted as a standard for documenting processes and procedures. ISO 9000 is a process that typically shifts an organisation’s culture to allow successful Total Quality Management (TQM) implementation. Researchers fou...

This paper presents new results on quality assessment of models identified from a finite data sample. Suppose that we are given a finite sample of measurements coming from a plant and that we are asked to provide a model of the plant along with a certification of the model quality. The certification of the model quality is a measure of how far the identified model can be from the best model in ...

4 Goals Identification of the effects of stress at sea Mapping how to identify ways to reduce fatigue Identify how to improve the quality of life of people working at sea Protection of the mental health of seafarers Agreeing on ways of fostering the seafarers’ family life Preparing the crew on how to cope with a piracy attack Identification of the psychosocial aspects To obtain and review of av...

Since the inception of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) almost 100 years ago, each of its member boards has either explicitly or implicitly addressed the issue of enhancing and assuring physician quality by setting standards for training and cognitive knowledge for their specialties. However, a number of reports issued in the late 1990s once again raised concerns about the healt...