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MRR
35,10 Impact of ISO 9000 certification
on firm performance: evidence
from Brazil
974
Francisco Starke
FEA (School of Economics and Administration), Universidade de São Paulo,
São Paulo, Brazil
Rangamohan V. Eunni
Williamson College of Business Administration, Youngstown State University,
Youngstown, Ohio, USA, and
Nuno Manoel Martins Dias Fouto and Claudio Felisoni de Angelo
FEA (School of Economics and Administration), Universidade de São Paulo,
São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ISO 9000 certification on three
dimensions of firm performance that are theoretically derived to have a relationship with the adoption
of ISO 9000 standards, namely, sales revenue, cost of goods sold/sales revenue, and the asset turnover
ratio (sales/total assets).
Design/methodology/approach – Employing a panel data approach covering all publicly traded
companies in Brazil that had adopted the ISO 9000 standards from 1995 to 2006, the authors
investigate the impact of the certification on firm performance using three categories of economic
regression models: the pooling of cutting data with ordinary least squares, the fixed effects and the
random effects.
Findings – ISO 9000 certification is found to be associated with an increase in sales revenues,
decrease in cost of goods sold/sales revenue and increase in the asset turnover ratios of the certified
firms.
Research limitations/implications – The research findings suggest that companies large or
small, irrespective of their capital structure (i.e. debt/equity) and cutting across industries will benefit
from the adoption of ISO 9000 standards. However, the extent to which firms benefit from such
adoption is likely to vary. Moreover, the generalizability of the research findings is limited by the size
of the sample.
Originality/value – The paper’s chief contribution lies in the validation of the signaling theory in
the context of business organizations and extending the domain of research on this topic to emerging
markets generally.
Keywords Brazil, Public companies, ISO 9000 series, Organizational performance, Sales turnover
Paper type Research paper

Management Research Review
Vol. 35 No. 10, 2012
pp. 974-997
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2040-8269
DOI 10.1108/01409171211272697
Introduction
The ISO 9000 family is widely recognized as a quality management system and is
increasingly popular among large and small companies alike around the world. Originally
published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1987, the
standards underwent successive revisions in 1994, 2000, and more recently in 2008. The
popularity of the certification could be gauged from the fact that the number of firms that
had adopted the standards increased from a mere 46,571 in 1993 to 1,064,785 spread over Impact of ISO
176 countries in 2009 (ISO Survey, 2010). In B2B transactions such as in the auto industry, 9000 certification
manufacturers typically require their suppliers to be ISO 9000 certified as an assurance
for quality and reliability of components (Barnes, 1998). The European Commission and
other European Community institutions actively promoted the adoption of the ISO 9000
standards which were eventually incorporated in the European Union business directives
(Karapetrovic et al., 2010). As a result, over 0.5 million firms have adopted the standards 975
in Europe. The corresponding number of firms in China is over 0.25 million (ISO, 2010).
There was a remarkable growth in the numbers of certified businesses around the world
since its inception in 1994-2010. Is the growing popularity of the ISO 9000 due to the
perceived benefits of such certification? Does ISO 9000 contribute to enhancing firm
performance?
The evidence is mixed and often contradictory. Proponents of the standards cite
benefits such as improved operational efficiency, enhanced customer satisfaction, increase
in market share, cost savings, competitive advantage, perceived higher quality, increased
revenues and operating income (DeAngelis, 1991; Hambrick and Mann, 1995; Castledine
and Bannister, 1996; Elmuti, 1996; Aksoy and Schaedel, 1997; Ebrahimpour et al., 1997;
O’Neil, 1998; Zuckerman, 1998; Casadesus and Gimenez, 2000; Douglas et al., 2003;
Corbett et al., 2005; Bhuiyan and Alam, 2005; Dunu and Ayokanmbi, 2008). On the other
hand, the certification process has been criticized as being expensive and time consuming
without any real gains in financial performance accruing to the firms (Mallak et al., 1997;
Joubert, 1998; Stevenson and Barnes, 2001; Han et al., 2007). These divergent inferences
might in part be due to their focus on macro measures of firm performance such as market
share, profitability, operating income, etc. which could be confounded by factors other
than ISO 9000 quality certification.
Moreover, many of these studies were cross-sectional focusing on financial
performance in particular years following certification rather than over time (Lima et al.,
2000; Singels et al., 2001; Martinez-Costa and Martinez-Lorente, 2002; Nicolau and
Sellers, 2002; Tari and Molina, 2002; Santos and Escanciano, 2002; Naser et al., 2004;
Bayati and Taghavi, 2007; Han et al., 2007). In studies which were longitudinal too,
the data were collected for specific years in a time span rather than in all the years
(Corbett et al., 2001; Wayhan et al., 2002; Terlaak and King, 2006; Dick et al., 2008;
Karapetrovic et al., 2010). Moreover, in both types of studies, the theoretical basis
for adopting particular measures of firm performance was not always rigorously
established. With a view to address these possible limitations, in our study we employ
the panel data approach and include all publicly traded companies in Brazil that have
adopted the ISO 9000 standards over a 12 year period, 1995-2006. We investigate the
impact of the certification on three dimensions of firm performance that are theoretically
derived to have a relationship with the adoption of ISO 9000 standards namely, sales
revenue, cost of goods sold and asset turnover ratio.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. In the next section, we review relevant
literature relating the adoption of ISO 9000 standards to the financial performance of
firms followed by the derivation of hypotheses formulated for this study. We then report
on the methods and results of statistical analysis to test these hypotheses. We conclude
with a discussion of the findings of the study and its implications.
MRR Literature review
35,10 There is no consensus concerning the effective contribution of quality management
practices to the performance of a company. Despite the existence of a series of studies
that point to a positive correlation between ISO 9000 certification and superior financial
performance of certified firms, a number of researchers suggested that the standard is
either process focused or works as a marketing strategy, devoid of any direct impact on
976 corporate financial performance.
There have been a number of cross-sectional studies which concluded that ISO 9000
certification correlates with a positive impact on a firm’s financial performance. Tari
and Molina (2002) found a positive correlation between ISO 9000 registration and the
business performance of companies. The authors used factor analysis and cluster analysis
to evaluate total quality management and its effects on ISO 9000 certified firms.
Additionally, the authors concluded that these firms achieved greater customer
satisfaction, employee satisfaction, social impact and heightened business performance.
Naser et al. (2004) developed a performance evaluation model based on a sample of
companies located in Malaysia and confirmed that ISO 9000 certified companies
experience higher financial success.
Nicolau and Sellers (2002) conducted an event study in Spain, analyzing the stock
market’s response to a company after it had become ISO 9000 certified. The results
showed a significant positive reaction to ISO 9000 certification as measured by an
increase in stock price. They had also noted that such certification gives shareholders a
means of predicting a firm’s future success. Casadesus and Gimenez (2000) measured the
firms’ performance before and after certification, and derived a positive correlation
between ISO 9000 certification and a business’ financial success. Earlier on, Lloyds
Register of Quality Assurance Ltd’s (1996) survey found that the performance of ISO
9000 certified companies measured by sales growth, profit margins, and return on
capital employed was far superior to the industry average.
On the other hand, several other cross-sectional studies contradicted these findings
and concluded that there is no relationship between a firm’s performance and ISO 9000
certification. For instance, studies by Lima et al. (2000) in Brazil, Singels et al. (2001) in
The Netherlands, and Martinez-Costa and Martinez-Lorente (2002) in Spain found no
association between ISO 9000 certification and improved firm performance. In a survey
of 100 quality professionals in UK firms conducted by Douglas et al. (2003), 49 percent of
respondents opined that no benefits in terms of cost savings or waste reduction resulted
from the adoption of ISO 9000 standards.
Similarly, Dimara et al. (2004) found that there were no significant improvements in
financial performance indicators of the firms studied after six years of the adoption
of ISO 9000. Based on a study of the performance effects of the adoption of ISO 9000
standards by companies manufacturing electronic, electrical equipment and
components, chemicals and allied products in the USA, Han et al. (2007) reported
that ISO 9000 certification does not by itself guarantee customer satisfaction or
improve a firm’s business performance. Finally, Dunu and Ayokanmbi (2008) had
found that while revenues and operating income improved following ISO 9000
certification, there were no significant improvements the ratios of revenue to assets
or operating income to assets. They had also reported that although ISO 9000
certified firms performed better than non-ISO 9000 firms, the differences were not
statistically significant.
 Extant research on the relationship between ISO 9000 certification firm performance Impact of ISO
also includes several longitudinal studies with considerable divergence in their findings. 9000 certification
For instance, Heras et al. (2002a, b) compared the return on assets employed of
400 accredited and 400 non-accredited Spanish firms, and found that the returns on
assets employed were consistently better in certified firms than in non-certified ones.
However, these scholars had also noted that the success might be due to an increased
propensity to pursue ISO 9000 certification, and their research did not measure the firms’ 977
performance after receiving certification.
Corbett et al. (2005) had investigated the performance of US companies with SIC codes
2000-3999 during 1987-1997 using event-study methods, and found that the ISO 9000
certification was indeed followed by significant abnormal improvements in financial
performance although the exact timing and magnitude of this effect depended upon the
specification of the control group. The measures of performance used in this study were
return on assets, Tobin’s q, cost of goods sold/sales and sales/assets. Haversjo (2000)
investigated 664 firms, some of which were ISO 9000 certified while others were not
using the rate of return as the measure of firm performance, and concluded that ISO 9000
certified companies yielded drastically higher rates of return than non-ISO firms.
However, much like the study conducted by Heras et al. (2002a, b), these tests fail to
account for pre-ISO versus post-ISO performance.
In contrast to the foregoing studies, several longitudinal studies had concluded that
ISO 9000 certification has no impact on a firm’s financial success. For instance,
Wayhan et al. (2002) found that in a sample of 96 US firms, although there was no increase
in sales, cost savings resulted in increased profitability in ISO 9000 certified firms during
1994-1998. The return on assets of these firms was only marginally higher than those
without such certification. Haversjo’s (2000) analysis of the returns on capital employed of
800 Danish companies between 1989 and 1995 also found no significant improvement post
certification for three years. However, the certified firms enjoyed four years of better sales
growth compared to the non-certified firms.
Heras et al. (2002b) found that, although the performance of certified companies is
superior to that of non-certified firms generally, there is no evidence of improved
performance differentials between the two post certification. They had therefore
concluded that the superior performance of certified firms might be because such firms
have a greater propensity to pursue ISO 9000 registration. The measures of performance
were sales growth and return on total assets and the period covered was 1994-1998.
Similarly, Karapetrovic et al. (2010) had analyzed the benefits and costs of ISO 9001
certification for more than 1,000 firms in Catalonia, Spain and found that the benefits of
certification have gradually decreased over time. In addition, they concluded that
the costs of becoming ISO certified have also decreased over the last several years.
A summary of research studies on this topic during the period 2000-2010 along with the
nature of findings on the relationship between ISO 9000 certification and firm
performance as well as the metrics used to estimate firm performance is presented in
Table I. For ease of reference, these studies are organized into a 2 £ 2 matrix using the
nature of study – cross-sectional/longitudinal and the findings whether ISO certification
affects business performance – yes/no, which is presented in Table II.
The differing reasons that lead companies to obtain the ISO 9000 certification may have
an explanation for the divergent outcomes (Jones et al., 1997). Gore (1994) argued that if a
company had chosen to obtain the certification for exogenous reasons, then the certification
 978
35,10
MRR

Table I.
Impact of ISO 9000

research, 2000-2010
certification on firm
performance: summary of
Cross-sectional/ Does ISO 9000 affect business
Research study longitudinal performance? Yes/no Variables used to measure firm performance

Karapetrovic et al. (2010) Longitudinal No Quality management, not firm performance

Boiral and Amara (2009) Cross-sectional Yes Diverse performance configurations
Dick et al. (2008) Longitudinal No Return on assets
Dunu and Ayokanmbi (2008) Cross-sectional Yes to revenue and operating Revenue, operating income, revenue/assets, operating income/assets
income; no to revenue/assets and
operating income/assets
Han et al. (2007) Cross-sectional No for business performance; yes Organizational competitiveness, customer satisfaction, profit, market
for organizational competitiveness share
Bayati and Taghavi (2007) Cross-sectional Inconclusive Cost reduction
Terlaak and King (2006) Longitudinal Yes Production volume
Dimara et al. (2004) Cross-sectional No when pooled together; yes, if Total sales, total assets, net fixed assets, equity, net profits
grouped by strategic orientation
Naser et al. (2004) Cross-sectional Yes Return on sales, lender security, free cash flow, economic value added
Douglas et al. (2003) Cross-sectional Yes Cost savings/waste reduction
Heras et al. (2002a) Longitudinal Yes Return on assets
Heras et al. (2002b) Longitudinal No Return on assets
Martinez-Costa and Martinez- Cross-sectional No Stock price
Lorente (2002)
Nicolau and Sellers (2002) Cross-sectional Yes Stock price
Santos and Escanciano (2002) Cross-sectional Yes Satisfaction regarding internal and external benefits
Tari and Molina (2002) Cross-sectional Yes for customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, social impact, TQM
performance
Terlaak (2002) Longitudinal No Operational performance, environmental performance
Wayhan et al. (2002) Longitudinal Very limited Return on assets
Corbett et al. (2001) Longitudinal Yes Return on assets, return on sales, Tobin’s Q, internal improvements,
COGS/sales ratios, markets benefits, sales/assets
Singels et al. (2001) Cross-sectional No Production process, company results, customer satisfaction, investment
on means
Casadesus and Gimenez (2000) Cross-sectional Yes Internal: process and work involvement; external clients requirements
and relationship; access into new markets
Haversjo (2000) Longitudinal Three years: no Sales growth
Four years: yes
Lima et al. (2000) Cross-sectional No Operating income/total assets, net income/total assets, sales/total assets,
operating income/sales, net income/sales
 Impact of ISO
Cross-sectional Longitudinal
9000 certification
Positive impact Casadesus and Gimenez (2000) Haversjo (2000) – four years
Tari and Molina (2002) Corbett et al. (2001)
Santos and Escanciano (2002) Heras et al. (2002a)
Nicolau and Sellers (2002) Terlaak and King (2006)
Douglas et al. (2003) 979
Naser et al. (2004)
Dimara et al. (2004)
Dunu and Ayokanmbi (2008)
Boiral and Amara (2009)
No impact Lima et al. (2000) Haversjo (2000) – three years
Singels et al. (2001) Wayhan et al. (2002) Table II.
Martinez-Costa and Martinez-Lorente (2002) Terlaak (2002) Impact of ISO 9000
Dimara et al. (2004) Heras et al. (2002b) certification on firm
Bayati and Taghavi (2007) Dick et al. (2008) performance:
Han et al. (2007) Karapetrovic et al. (2010) cross-sectional versus
Dunu and Ayokanmbi (2008) longitudinal

would be seen as an end in itself and the company might make minimal changes in quality
management systems in order to achieve certification. Companies that view ISO 9000 as an
opportunity to adopt and improve their quality management systems are more likely to
reap improved performance consequences than those that see the certification merely as a
token or badge of achievement (Heras et al., 2002a, b). ISO 9000 certification thus serves as
a sign of higher quality attributes, not necessarily observable, which would provide a
competitive advantage. These explanations linking performance outcomes of ISO 9000
adoption to the underlying motivational factors are novel and interesting but need to be
empirically established before credence could be placed in them.
In our assessment, there are three issues with the extant research on the ISO 9000
certification – firm performance relationship on both sides of the aisle, which need to be
addressed in order to be able to make valid statements about the performance implications
of the quality management system. First, the nature of the association between the adoption
of the ISO 9000 standards and firm performance needs to be rigorously grounded in theory.
Second, the study should necessarily be longitudinal with a sufficiently long time span and
with data for all the years in order to be robust enough to yield credible inferences. Third,
the metrics of performance should as far as practicable be those measures which are less
likely to be confounded by myriad other factors that could potentially influence firm
performance. For instance, profitability would not be an appropriate performance measure
to capture the impact of ISO 9000 certification because whether it is defined as operating
margin, net margin, return on sales or return on assets because all such measures are
arrived at after accounting for various operating expenses, interest and/or taxes, which can
impact and confound the performance metric. Our present study is an attempt to address
these issues. We ground our argument to propose a direct and positive relationship between
ISO 9000 certification and firm performance in the theoretical framework of information
economics (Akerlof, 1970; Spence, 1973). The relationship will be explored in a longitudinal
setting spanning 12 years with panel data for each of the years over this time span. Finally,
the metrics that we will use to estimate firm performance will be such that extraneous
MRR influences are likely to be minimal. The metrics chosen for this study and the reasons
35,10 therefore will be elaborated in the section on methods.

Hypothesis development
Impact of ISO 9000 adoption on sales revenues: an economic argument
Quality is not an absolute measure, but a goal to be achieved, which is constantly changing
980 as consumer needs and demands evolve. A consumer prefers to source a supplier who has
established credentials of quality whether by the consistency of deliveries, the reliability of
materials used, or more generally by the capacity of the supplier to understand the
consumer’s desires. Consumer is the judge of a product’s quality. To judge correctly, they
need accurate and complete product information. Asymmetric information could result in
bad choices, especially in economic decision making and lead to imperfect agreements and
inefficiencies (Radner, 1968; Rosser, 2003). In classical economics, dispersed, tacit, and
inaccurate information is what is termed as asymmetric information.
Asymmetric information results in preponderance of “lemons” (low quality products),
which undermine the credibility and price of higher quality products leading to their
withdrawal from the market (Akerlof, 1970; Rosser, 2003). The phenomenon in which
“lemons” force quality goods to be withdrawn from the market is termed adverse
selection. Akerlof (1970) developed this theory in the context of organizations and
illustrated it with the example of used car dealerships. A solution to this problem of
market imperfection would be to develop enough reputation so a consumer would give
necessary credence to the seller. By making information more symmetrical to the market,
a company creates the necessary reputation so its product’s quality becomes
unquestionable, keeping the “lemons” off direct competition (Figure 1). Kreps (2004)
uses the term “hidden information” to describe the same phenomenon. The antidote for
hidden information is its disclosure. This is achieved through certificates, opinions of
independent bodies, advertising, etc. Spence (1973) terms it as the “signaling” of
capabilities. Companies could set a higher price for their products, provided they could
show that their products are not “lemons”. The creation of reputation would signal the
reduction of asymmetric information for consumers, which can serve as an entry barrier
preventing “lemons” from entering the competition. The ISO 9000 certification is one
such signaling approach designed to differentiate quality products from lemons.
The ISO 9000 certification requires the completion of an audit carried out by an
independent certification body. Certification once achieved is subject to periodic review to
maintain its continuance, usually once every two to three years. Thus, ISO 9000 certification
is an ongoing signaling process: that by performing a regular review, a company seeks to

Figure 1. Note: George Akerlof and Michael Spence shared the 2001 Economics Nobel Prize with
Akerlof-Spence signaling Joseph Stiglitz for this work
approach
Source: Based on Akerlof (1970) and Spence (1973)
continuously improve their quality management practices. Terlaak and King (2006) Impact of ISO
highlight that the previous studies on the impact of quality on firm performance failed 9000 certification
to explain from a theoretical standpoint the nature of quality management, and the
causal relationship between ISO 9000 certification and firm performance.
A company that implements the ISO 9000 standards is in effect making a statement,
informing potential customers that its products and services result from an organized and
structured process management system, which is continuously seeking improvement. 981
This is not known to consumers because it is an internal practice and is therefore a hidden
attribute of the company and its products. ISO 9000 certification thus serves as a signal to
the market, conferring a competitive advantage to the companies by disclosing
information on hidden attributes (Terlaak and King, 2006) thereby distinguishing certified
companies from non-certified ones (Anderson et al., 1999), enabling them to charge a
premium price as well as achieve enhanced sales volume. Exploring the strategic use of
decentralized institutions such as the ISO 9000/ISO 14000 management standards,
King et al. (2005) theorized that firms use such certifications as a means to reduce problems
that could arise with exchange partners who lack credible information or fear supplier
opportunism. Certification thus emerges a way to provide credible information about
hard-to-observe organizational attributes. In fact, King et al. (2005) confirmed that
certification reveals the existence of an underlying management system and
demonstrated that such systems are associated with performance improvements.
Nayyar (1990) argues that the asymmetry is one of the most important factors to
determine the transaction costs in an exchange relationship: the consumer lies within
an environment that depends, in large part, on that information provided before and
after their purchase. Therefore, firms that consider quality a marketing priority need to
reduce this information asymmetry; the certification of this quality and the related
management systems would, therefore, help reduce this phenomenon, and ensure an
advantage over those competitors who do not take into account the value of quality
(Nicolau and Sellers, 2002).
By choosing to obtain the certification, a company is in effect signaling to the market,
their suppliers and consumers that it offers high-quality products and services, due
to some hidden attributes (quality management systems), information to which the
various interested parties (stakeholders) have no access. ISO 9000 certification makes the
information less asymmetrical and the selection less adverse. Removal of asymmetry in
information about a company’s products not only enables it to charge a higher price but
also attract more customers due to the recognition of quality of its products. Both these
factors contribute to an increase in the sales revenues of firms following the adoption of
ISO 9000 standards.
Unlike other profit linked measures of financial performance such as operating or net
income, return on sales, return on assets, etc. which could be confounded by myriad
other factors such as operating expenses, interest and taxes, sales growth is one measure
that could capture the impact of ISO certification directly and with integrity. It is in part
for this reason that in some earlier studies such as those of Haversjo (2000), Dimara et al.
(2004) and Dunu and Ayokanmbi (2008) the total sales or increase in sales were used to
measure firm performance following such certification. Based on these arguments, we
hypothesize as follows:
H1. There is a direct and positive relationship between ISO 9000 certification and
increase in sales revenues.
MRR ISO 9000 adoption and cost savings
35,10 The cost of quality concept postulates that as quality improves the total cost of quality
decreases (Hendricks and Singhal, 2001). The internal and managerial motivation to
adopt ISO 9000 often has a beneficial impact on the company’s ability to achieve
performance effectiveness configuration (Boiral and Amara, 2009). Withers and
Ebrahimpour (2000) believe that realization by the management of the intrinsic value of
982 ISO 9000 certification is an important factor in securing a competitive advantage.
Operating a company according to the process management model recommended by
ISO 9000 may also contribute to reducing the development time for new products and the
production costs in general (Dimara et al., 2004) as well as to improve the efficiency of
internal processes (Santos and Escanciano, 2002).
Based on a survey of 393 professional members of the Quality Management Division
of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Sower et al. (2007) found that as a company’s
quality control system matures, the quality cost distribution will systematically change
among the four categories of costs recognized by the ASQ – prevention, appraisal,
internal and external failure costs. The study found that external failure costs decrease
as a percentage of total quality cost as the organization’s quality system matures. The
study also found evidence for the premise that external failure costs decline with
increased appraisal costs and that both internal and external failure costs decrease with
increases in prevention costs. As a company’s quality system matures, the proportion of
total quality cost spent on prevention activities increases while the costs of external
failure decrease. Total cost of quality decreases over time for companies with quality
systems and which track the cost of quality but the magnitude of the decrease
diminishes the longer the quality system has been in place.
Anderson et al. (1999) indicated as important motivators in obtaining ISO 9000
certification:
.
cost reduction and consequent improvement of product quality;
.
the lower costs of operating with various customers;
.
the opportunity for internal improvement in management processes of
companies; and
.
the greater involvement of employees.

Han et al. (2007) conclude that the efforts to obtain the ISO 9000 certification increase
competitiveness, which in turn increases the performance of companies. This is due to the
improved quality, reduced costs and operational flexibility. Docking and Dowen (1999)
reported that adherence to ISO 9000 certification indicates that the company has been
positioned itself in the market for a long time which in turn leads to business
commitment. Certification compliance process cuts internal production costs, which can
be transferred to customers and investors.
The main reason for adopting the ISO 9000 standards is to improve organizational
performance through a more efficient use of resources and processes in order to generate
better quality products and services. Following Corbett et al. (2005), we argue that
implementation of the ISO 9000 quality management system requires the management of
the company and its employees to work with discipline. It entails adoption of procedures
that ensure that quality is measured and corrective steps taken when necessary. Focus on
failure prevention leads to the reduction of operating costs due to earlier detection of defects
which could be corrected at a lower cost. By documenting these practices, obsolescence is Impact of ISO
eliminated with timely response to changing quality expectations. While cost savings 9000 certification
would impact profitability, as argued earlier, the latter measure defined as operating
margin or net margin would not accurately capture the true impact of ISO 9000 certification
on such savings. This is due to the fact that operating income/margin is arrived at after
accounting for a variety of operating expenses from sales revenues while net
income/margin is computed after deducting interest and taxes. For the same reasons, 983
any “return” or “income” based measures of profitability such as return on sales or return
on assets would not be accurate metrics to capture the performance implications of
ISO 9000 certification. Hence, we preferred to use cost savings scaled over the sales
revenues as an appropriate measure of firm performance. Based on this line of reasoning,
we hypothesize as follows:
H2. ISO 9000 certification is likely to be associated with reduction in the ratio of
cost of goods sold to the sales revenues of the certified firm.

ISO 9000 adoption and asset turnover ratio

Any effort to improve quality should consider the costs to achieve the desired quality.
It is necessary to meet the requirements and desires of customers and consumers but
with due regard to lower costs. Schiffauerova and Thomson (2005) believe that this
only happens by reducing the costs required to achieve quality preserving the asset
levels, it is possible to use them more efficiently to stimulate sales. In addition, a
company must be committed to continuously produce at a lower cost so as to increase
its market share (Omachonu et al., 2004). Moreover, ISO 9000 certification which
evidences achievement of certain quality standards could help reduce the pressure
from customers to lower the prices. This could lead to increased sales revenue as
postulated in H1.
Easton and Jarrell (1998) who had used sales/assets as one of the measures of
firm performance argued that “unexpected” performance gains following the
occurance of an event such as ISO certification are best captured over a three to five
year period as the effects of such certification are likely to yield over the longer
term. The asset turnover ratio is an appropriate metric to capture such longer term
impacts as it smoothens out annual fluctuations in sales or use of assets due to routine
contingencies.
Based on the aforesaid arguments, in order to determine whether the sales growth
resulting from ISO 9000 certification as hypothesized earlier reflects the company’s
growth or an increase in asset turnover, following Hendricks and Singhal (1997) and
Corbett et al. (2001), we incorporate the asset turnover ratio also into our investigation
and hypothesize as below:
H3. ISO 9000 certification is likely to be associated with increased asset turnover
ratio, i.e. sales revenue/total assets of the certified firm.

Methodology
Variables and their operationalization
The description and types of variables used in our study are summarized in Table III.
The independent variable in our study was “ISO 9000 certification”, which is an
indicator variable. It may take the value 0 for non-certified publicly held companies
MRR
Variable name Description Type
35,10
TOT VEND Annual sales revenue Financial/dependent
CSVtoVEND Ratio of production cost to sales revenue Financial/dependent
VENDtoAT TOT Ratio of sales revenue to total assets Financial/dependent
CERT ISO Company’s certification by ISO 9000 Indicator/independent
984 RISCO Operating risk Financial/control
LUCRAT Profitability calculated by net margin Financial/control
ENDIV Long-term debt to equity ratio Financial/control
TAM EMP Firm size ¼ logarithm of total assets Financial/control
Table III.
Variables used in the Note: Notation used for the names of the variables is based on their description in Portuguese
regression models Source: Prepared by the authors

or for periods in which they did not have ISO 9000 certification and 1 for companies
with ISO 9000 certification, under any of the available versions: 1987, 1994 or 2000.
The dependent variables of our study are annual sales revenue, the ratio of
production cost to sales revenue, and the ratio of sales revenue to total assets. We have
decided to primarily rely up on sales revenue related measures to estimate financial
performance rather than the more popular profit linked measures such as return on
sales, return on assets, etc. because such measures do not capture performance
consequences of the occurrence of an event such as ISO certification with integrity. Any
financial ratio that is income or profit linked necessarily incorporates all direct costs and
operating expenses, and in the case of net profit even interest costs and taxes. In effect, an
increase in sales presumably resulting from an event such as ISO certification gets
confounded by a host of these extraneous factors such as operating efficiencies, capital
structure of the firm and tax burden in a country. In order to eliminate the impact of all
such unrelated influences and focus on the effect of ISO certification on firm
performance, we preferred to confine the metrics of our study to sales revenues,
production costs/sales and sales/assets. We believe that in this manner we would be able
to isolate the impact of ISO certification on firm performance in a more robust way.
The controls variables of our study are operating risk, profitability measured by net
margin, long-term debt to equity ratio, and firm size. Operating risk is measured by
sample standard deviation of the return on assets over the period 1996-2006.
Profitability is measured by the net margin, i.e. the ratio of net operating income and net
revenue multiplied by 100. Debt to equity ratio is given by the ratio of long-term debt and
total equity multiplied by 100. Finally, company size is measured by the logarithm of
total assets. The control variables were carefully chosen to ensure that the effect of
extraneous factors on the relationship between the independent and dependent variables
is minimized.
This study was conducted in Brazil using Portuguese language software for
statistical analysis. As a result, the notation used for the names of the variables is based
on their description in Portuguese.

Data and sample

This study covers the period from January 1995 to December 2006 and is based on three
large data sets. First, we used the database of the Securities Commission of Brazil (CVM),
available at the web site www.cvm.gov.br, from which we identified all publicly held
companies with current and valid registration or which have closed anytime during the Impact of ISO
period under review. The second step was to identify the companies that have or had 9000 certification
ISO 9000 certification anytime during the period from 1995 to 2006 employing the
database of the Brazilian Committee for Quality (CB-25) of the Brazilian Association of
Technical Standards (ABNT). Next, we used the database of Economática for financial
information. Among all the publicly held companies that existed in Brazil during
1995-2006 identified from the database of the CVM, there were only 44 companies that 985
achieved ISO 9000 certification and had financial data available for all the 12 years
during the captioned period. Thus, we had a total of 528 company-year data points in
ours sample (i.e. 44 companies £ 12 years).
Some companies might have multiple certifications for different units within the
same plant while others might have such certification for only one or more of the units
while the financial data relates to the entire company. There is no way to segregate the
financial performance of only a part of the company which is certified. We had therefore
taken cognizance of the first occasion when a branch or plant of a company obtained
ISO 9000 certification and adopted the financials of the whole company. Underlying this
approach is the assumption that the effects of certification would manifest in the other
units over time as was suggested in earlier studies (Docking and Dowen, 1999; Simmons
and White, 1999; Corbett et al., 2005).
Of the 44 publicly held companies with ISO 9000 certification that constituted the
panel, 2.3 percent belonged to the primary sector, 79.6 percent to the secondary
(manufacturing) and 18.1 percent to the tertiary (service) sector. While 13.6 percent of the
companies had foreign ownership, 4.6 percent were companies controlled by the Brazilian
Government and 81.8 percent were domestic companies with full private equity. 36 of the
firms in the panel (81.8 percent) were certified for the first time under the ISO 9000: 1987
or 1994 versions and 8 (18.2 percent) were certified under the ISO 9001:2000 version. 27 of
them (61.4 percent) were certified before 1995, the first year of the period under analysis.
All financial institutions, securities dealership, private pension, participation and other
such entities with no “business” activities (i.e. adventure in the nature of trade) were
excluded from the panel. Companies that went public in 2005 and 2006, or those that were
certified for the first time in 2005 were also excluded. These exclusions made the panel
conservative and the findings of the research study more robust.

The regression model

A regression model with static panel data was chosen for the study. We included in the
panel only those publicly held companies for which financial data were available for all
the years under review. As a result, we had a well-balanced panel, in which the number of
observations did not differ between the companies. We employed the Gretl software –
version 1.6.5, and the following static panel model:

Y it ¼ b 0 þ b j x it þ m it þ a i

where b0 represents the intercept, the other bj represent the coefficients of each regressor
variable, i represents the i-th cross-section unit (publicly held companies), t represents
the t-th period of time, mit represents the error term, and ai the random error of each
cross-sectional unit. While the fixed effects model considers that the intercept b0 of the
model may vary among individual companies to account for the fact that each company
may have special characteristics, the random effects model considers that the intercept
MRR of any individual company would be a random extraction of a much larger population
and with a constant average value (Wooldridge, 2006, p. 526).
35,10 Three categories of econometric regression models were employed: the pooling of
cutting data with ordinary least squares, the fixed effects and the random effects. Static
panel data models are those that consider strictly exogenous independent variables
(regressors), which admit no lags from the dependent variables (Richieri, 2007, p. 109). We
986 used the Fischer, Breusch-Pagan and Hausman tests to accept or reject the null hypotheses
related, respectively, with:
.
the existence or not of a single intercept of the cross-section units;
.
variance set to zero; and
.
estimators being consistent with the generalized least squares.

Results
The final regression models applied to test the hypotheses of this study are presented
below:

TOT_VEND ¼ b0 þ b1 CERT_ISOit þ b2 RISCOit þ b3 LUCRAT it þ b4 ENDIV it

þ b5 TAM _EMP it þ mit þ ai

CSVtoVEND ¼ b0 þ b1 CERT_ISOit þ b2 RISCOit þ b3 LUCRAT it þ b4 ENDIV it

þ b5 TAM _EMP it þ mit þ ai

VENDtoAT_TOT ¼ b0 þ b1 CERT_ISOit þ b2 RISCOit þ b3 LUCRAT it

þ b4 ENDIV it þ b5 TAM _EMP it þ mit þ ai

The descriptive statistics for all the variables are summarized in Table IV.
Multicollinearity between variables was investigated through the variance inflation
factors. The VIF values ranged from a minimum of 1.017 and a maximum of 1.121,
validating the regression models. For values over 10, it is recommended to remove such
variable from the regression model. This has not occurred in this study as can be seen from
Table V. The use of all the variables proposed was validated in the regression models as
seen from the correlation matrix presented in Table VI.
Note that the independent variable CERT_ISO has negative correlation coefficients with
CSVtoVEND, RISCO and ENDIV. We thus infer that ISO 9000 certification contributes
positively to the reduction of:
.
production costs;
.
risk; and
.
debt.

Likewise, it would contribute to the increase of operating assets turnover, profitability

and asset size. The presence of heteroscedasticity was identified in each regression
through the White test, amended by the use of robust standard errors for each regression.
Regressions were performed for the three dependent variables: annual sales revenue, cost
of goods sold/sales revenue, and the asset turnover ratio.
Variables n Mean SD Median Minimum Maximum Coefficient of variation

TOT_VEND 528
CSVtoVEND 528 7.0655 £ 10þ 01 1.2866 £ 10þ 01 7.1993 £ 10þ 01 0.0000 1.1039 £ 10þ 02 0.182098
VENDtoAT_TOT 528 92.2734 82.6697 75.1507 0.0000 703.443 0.895921
CERT_ISO 528 1.14962 0.690378 1.0000 0.0000 2.0000 0.600527
RISCO 528 5.95630 5.38498 4.63288 0.0000 36.4312 0.904081
LUCRAT 528 4.28067 42.59720 4.71278 2 135.9040 902.9260 9.951060
ENDIV 528 68.55370 327.59000 50.71290 25,429.050 2,353.690 4.778590
TAM EMP 528 14.31150 1.76606 14.24050 0.0000 19.1881 0.123402
Source: Prepared by the authors
9000 certification

Descriptive statistics
Impact of ISO

987

Table IV.
MRR ISO 9000 certification and annual sales revenues
35,10 The H1 of our study was designed to ascertain whether there is a direct and positive
relationship between the adoption of ISO 9000 standards and increase in sales revenues
of the firm post certification. Table VII presents the regression results. For our panel of
44 companies, the best model based on the Fischer, Breusch-Pagan and Hausman tests
was the fixed effects model. This is also confirmed by the Akaike and Schwarz criteria.
988 All the coefficients for the independent ISO 9000 certification variable appeared
positive and significant at 1 percent, evidencing positive contribution of the
certification to increase in sales revenues. Thus, our H1 was confirmed. As
theoretically predicted, the adoption of ISO 9000 standards by a firm is followed by a
significant increase in its sales revenues.

ISO 9000 certification and cost of goods sold/sales revenue

H2 of our study was to investigate whether ISO 9000 certification is associated with
reduction in the ratio of cost of goods sold to the sales revenues of the certified firm.
Table VII presents the regression results. The best model using the same criteria as
described above was again the fixed effects model. All the coefficients for the
independent variable were negative and significant at 1 percent, pointing to a positive
contribution of the certification to cost savings. As a result, we accept H2 and conclude
that the adoption of ISO 9000 standards by a company is likely to lead to a reduction in
the ratio of cost of goods sold to sales revenues of the certified firm (Table VIII).

ISO 9000 certification and asset turnover ratio

H3 of the study was to examine whether ISO 9000 certification is likely to be associated
with an increase in the asset turnover ratio, i.e. sales revenue/total assets of the
certified firm. The regression results are summarized in Table IX. As could be seen,

CERT_ISO RISCO LUCRAT ENDIV TAM_EMP

Table V.
Inflation factors of 1.082 1.121 1.017 1.043 1.083
independent and control
variables Source: Prepared by the authors

TOT_ CSV to VEND to CERT_ TAM_

VEND VEND AT TOT ISO RISCO LUCRAT ENDIV EMP

TOT VEND 1.00000

CSVtoVEND 0.36520 1.00000
VENDtoAT
TOT 0.22370 0.71730 1.00000
CERT ISO 20.10230 0.06700 0.15080 1.00000
RISCO 0.11890 20.08580 20.07650 2 0.25220 1.00000
LUCRAT 20.17390 20.04400 20.04540 0.01370 20.12270 1.00000
ENDIV 20.08930 20.07970 20.09110 2 0.00710 0.08790 20.01010 1.00000
TAM EMP 20.17150 20.16930 20.24270 0.14970 20.17660 0.05730 0.16500 1.00000
Table VI.
Correlation matrix Source: Prepared by the authors
 Models
Pooled OLS Fixed effects Random effects
n 528 528 528
Variables Coefficient p-value Coefficient p-value Coefficient p-value

CERT ISO 0.237068 0.05907 * 0.334753 , 0.00001 * * * 0.332414 , 0.00001 * * *

RISCO 20.0148843 0.4981 20.00532303 0.60273 2 0.00538839 0.30788
LUCRAT 20.000959323 0.42288 0.000151837 0.88058 0.000124267 0.75528
ENDIV 20.000109879 0.40026 23.5601 £ 102 05 0.36813 2 3.73489 £ 102 05 0.50557
TAM EMP 20.148693 0.0769878 0.0125604 0.56764 0.00393361 0.81749
CONSTANTE 2.68083 0.03121 * * – – 0.320731 0.25179
Adjusted R 2 0.0956182 0.854012 –
F 12.1437 65.2269 –
Akaike (AIC) 1,404.54 482.225 1,456.19
Schwarz (BIC) 1,414.57 691.411 1,481.81
F-test (43.479) 64.0638 p-value 0.133616 Fixed effects
Breusch-Pagan test 1,869.76 p-value 0 Random effects
Hausman test 8.82112 p-value 0.116415 Fixed effects
Note: Significant at: *10, * *5 and * * *1 percent
Source: Prepared by the authors
9000 certification

Total sales (TOT_VEND)

Impact of ISO

Table VII.
989
 990
35,10
MRR

Table VIII.

sales (CSV to VEND)

Production cost to total
Models
Pooled OLS Fixed effects Random effects
n 528 528 528
Variables Coefficient p-value Coefficient p-value Coefficient p-value

CERT ISO 2 1.20282 0.42481 23.15706 0.00010 * * * 22.99348 , 0.00001 * * *

RISCO 0.160651 0.28511 20.138576 0.46593 20.0859538 0.37373
LUCRAT 2 0.0477865 0.28362 20.0221353 0.30745 20.0859538 0.00145 * * *
ENDIV 2 0.00298729 0.27898 20.000158781 0.85633 20.000264384 0.80037
TAM EMP 2 0.934893 0.55549 2.80632 ,0.00001 * * * 2.31401 , 0.00001 * * *
CONSTANTE 84.8697 0.00037 * – 41.6113 , 0.00001 * * *
Adjusted R 2 0.0620154 0.730475 –
F 7.96859 30.756 –
Akaike (AIC) 4,168.21 3,550.37 4,290.92
Schwarz (BIC) 4,193.83 3,759.56 4,316.54
F-test (43.479) 31.1077 p-value 5.67371 £ 102 112 Fixed effects
Breusch-Pagan test 1,062.78 p-value 4.05544 £ 102 233 Random effects
Hausman test 57.4475 p-value 4.08912 £ 102 11 Fixed effects
Note: Significant at: *10, * *5 and * * *1 percent
Source: Prepared by the authors
 Impact of ISO
Models
Pooled OLS Fixed effects Random effects 9000 certification
n 528 528 528
Variables Coefficient p-value Coefficient p-value Coefficient p-value

CERT ISO 8.31694 0.38802 20.607 0.00135 * * * 20.373 ,0.00001 * * *

RISCO 21.59653 0.30439 0.0209979 0.96601 20.011805 0.97648
LUCRAT 20.0918448 0.05420 * 0.000142799 0.99646 20.00129472 0.96568 991
ENDIV 20.00994439 0.13005 20.00407803 0.1482 20.00419621 0.32204
TAM EMP 28.83956 0.11906 2.33044 0.22615 1.92726 0.13681
CONSTANTE 219.803 0.02022 * – – 41.6338 0.06155 *
Adjusted R 2 0.0416798 0.888232 –
F 5.58412 88.2525 –
Akaike (AIC) 6,143.97 5,050.04 6,182.55
Schwarz (BIC) 6,169.59 5,259.22 6,208.17
F-test (43.479) 92.9471 p-value 4.72976 £ 102 204 Fixed
effects
Breusch- 2,113.91 p-value 0 Random
Pagan test effects
Hausman test 2.70486 p-value 0.745375 Fixed
effects
Table IX.
Note: Significant at: *10, * *5 and * * *1 percent Sales to total assets
Source: Prepared by the authors (VEND to AT_TOT)

of the three models, the random effects model emerges as the best model to explain this
relationship. However, the Akaike and Schwarz criteria suggest that the fixed effects
should also be considered because the values were lowest for the fixed effects model.
All the coefficients for the independent variable in the random effects model were
positive and significant at 1 percent, allowing us to infer that H3 is also validated. The
signs of all other variables, except profitability (net margin) in the pooled OLS model,
were along expected lines. Thus, we conclude that the adoption of ISO 9000 standards
by a company is associated with an increase in the asset turnover ratio, i.e. sales
revenue/total assets of the certified firm.
In sum, all the three hypotheses formulated for our study were confirmed by the
panel data of 44 publicly held companies in Brazil during the years 1995-2006.

Discussion
The increasing popularity of the ISO 9000 begs the question whether it is due to the
perceived benefits of such certification and whether the certification does in fact
contribute to enhanced firm performance. Although this topic has received extensive
attention of scholarship, the findings of extant research are divergent and often even
contradictory. This, in our view, might be due to the use of profit linked measures of firm
performance, which do not accurately isolate the impact of ISO 9000 certification.
Moreover, many of these studies were cross-sectional. Even where the studies were
longitudinal, the time span employed was often limited. With a view to address these
issues, our study covered a 12 year period, 1995-2006, and we used annual sales
revenues, the ratio of cost of goods sold to sales revenue and asset turnover ratio to
measure firm performance, which are less likely to be confounded by extraneous factors.
We grounded our argument to propose a direct and positive relationship between
MRR ISO 9000 adoption and firm performance employing the theoretical lens of information
35,10 economics (Akerlof, 1970; Spence, 1973). The hypotheses we formulated relate
ISO certification to the three measures of firm performance, namely, annual sales
revenues, the ratio of cost of goods sold to sales revenue and asset turnover ratio. All the
three hypotheses were confirmed by the panel data of all publicly held companies in
Brazil, which had adopted the ISO 9000 standards during the captioned period. Thus, we
992 found that adoption of ISO 9000 standards is followed by an increase in sales revenues,
decrease in the cost of goods sold/sales revenue and an increase in the asset turnover
ratios of the certified firms.

Theoretical contributions of the study

In formulating H1 of this study, which proposed a direct and positive relationship
between ISO 9000 certification and increase in sales revenues of the certified firms over
a period of time, following the signaling theory we argued that certifications such as
the ISO 9000 serve as a signal to distinguish superior quality products from lemons by
contributing to the reduction of asymmetric information between producers and
consumers. By the validation of this hypothesis, our study supports the core elements
of the signaling theory as applied to business organizations, and also in the process
offers additional empirical evidence to reinforce the findings of earlier studies such
as those by Anderson et al. (1999), Nicolau and Sellers (2002), Kreps (2004), King et al.
(2005) and Terlaak and King (2006). Moreover, a majority of the studies on the
performance implications of ISO certification thus far were conducted in respect of
firms in developed countries. Our study broadens the domain of research on this
topic by showing that signaling works especially in emerging markets such as Brazil,
which typically have less institutionally developed environments and where, as a
result, the information asymmetry between producers and consumers is likely to be
even more skewed.
Equally noteworthy is the empirical support that our study provides to the “cost of
quality” argument. H2 of our study proposed that ISO 9000 certification would be
associated with reduction in the ratio of cost of goods sold to the sales revenues of the
certified firm. This was founded on the premise that as quality improves the total cost of
quality decreases. The adoption of ISO 9000 quality management standards is expected
to result in quality improvements in various ways as these standards require a
systematic approach to monitoring and managing the quality of products and processes
in an organization. Confirmation of H2 of our study thus reinforces the findings of earlier
studies based on the cost of quality argument that as a company’s quality control system
matures, the distribution of quality costs among the four categories of costs recognized
by the ASQ – prevention, appraisal, internal and external failure costs will
systematically change (Sower et al., 2007), leading to the overall improvement in firm
performance (Tari and Molina, 2002; Karapetrovic et al., 2010).
We also believe that our study contributes to the growing body of management
research on the role of self regulatory institutions such as the ISO 9000 standards in
resolving market imperfections and thereby enhancing consumer welfare (King and
Toffel, 2009). Finally, in order to counter the limitations of cross-sectional studies, we
had employed a longitudinal panel of all publicly traded companies in Brazil, which had
acquired or maintained ISO 9000 certfication during the period 1995-2006, and in doing so
our study has vindicated the benefits of longitudinal panel datasets as a research design.
Managerial and policy implications of our study Impact of ISO
In our study, we controlled for the asset size of the company. Our finding that ISO 9000 9000 certification
certification enhances firm performance is thus independent of the size of the firm. Thus,
contrary to Heras et al.’s (2002b) argument that larger firms tend to go for the certfication
due to their ability to bear the costs involved in ISO registration, our study suggests that
companies large or small, irrespective of their capital structure (i.e. debt/equity) and
cutting across industries will benefit from the adoption of ISO 9000 standards. We would 993
therefore reiterate for managers that the study indicates certification indeed pays off.
This is especially relevant to the fast growing emerging markets such as China and
India where asymmetric information between the producers of quality products and
consumers is aggravated by the widespread prevalence of lemons due to weak
enforcement of regulatory laws governing intellectual property and copyrights, which in
turn encourages unregistered businesses to sell counterfeit and poor-quality goods such
as software, music and DVDs at low prices undercutting the competitiveness of lawful
firms. For public policy makers the findings of our study suggest that given its role in
addressing market imperfections and enhancing consumer welfare, certifications such
as the ISO 9000 should be encouraged.

Limitations of the study

We do however caution that the generalizability of the findings of our study is limited by
the size of our sample. Although we have included all the publicly traded companies in
Brazil, which have had ISO 9000 certifcation any time during the years 1995-2006, the
total number of such companies was only 44. Give such a small number, we recognize
that sample size is a limitation of our study. Additionally, in our study, we treated the
ISO certification as a dichotomous variable (0 for non-certified firms and 1 for certified
firms). Although this is consistent with the practice in earlier studies on this topic, we
realize that it is very difficult to know the real effects of the adoption of quality
management standards by simply looking at the fact of the certification alone. We
therefore recommend that future research may analyze the substance of the quality
management standards implied by the ISO 9000 certfication in order to know the effects
of this standard. This could be another interesting way to measure the ISO 9000
standard itself.

Suggestions for future research

Our study was based on the data relating to the producers, i.e. the publicly held
companies in our panel. While the adoption of ISO 9000 standards does signal the hidden
attribute of quality management, the value placed on such disclosure and its contribution
to influencing purchasing behavior of the consumer may depend on a variety of other
factors such as the reputation or brand equity enjoyed by the producer, the
characteristics of the consumer – individual or B2B, their knowledge level, the nature of
relationship and past interactions and experiences between the producer and consumer,
and so on. Thus, there is an opportunity to extend our understanding of the potential of
information economics in influencing consumer behavior by conducting studies that
include both parties to a transaction – producers as well as consumers.
Moreover, there is a geographical variation in the adoption of ISO 9000 standards.
While ISO certification is now included in the EU directives for businesses in Europe
(Karapetrovic et al., 2010), and is widely embraced in China and East Asia, it appears
MRR to be not as widespread in other markets such as the USA or even Brazil (ISO survey,
35,10 2009: www.iso.org). It might be interesting and instructive to explore the reasons for this
uneven distribution in the popularity of the standards, and the extent to which the
density of certification in a market impacts its efficacy in signaling the quality of
products and influencing consumer behavior.

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Further reading
Franceschini, F., Galetto, M. and Gianni, G. (2004), “A new forecasting for the diffusion of the ISO 997
9000 standard certification in European countries”, International Journal of Quality
& Reliability Management, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 32-50.
IMF (2008), World Economic Outlook Database, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.
Starke-Rodrigues, F.C.T. (2007), “The ISO 9000 certification and the financial performance of the
Brazilian publicly-traded companies”, doctoral dissertation, Universidade Presbiteriana
Mackenzie, São Paulo.

Corresponding author
Rangamohan V. Eunni can be contacted at: rveunni@ysu.edu

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