Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers

Authors:
David I. Levine;Michael W. Toffel
Affiliations:
Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720;Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
Venue:
Management Science
Year:
2010

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Abstract

Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 quality management systems standard predicts changes in organizational outcomes such as profits. This is the first large-scale study to explore how employee outcomes such as employment, earnings, and health and safety change when employers adopt ISO 9001. We analyzed a matched sample of nearly 1,000 companies in California. ISO 9001 adopters subsequently had far lower organizational death rates than a matched control group of nonadopters. Among surviving employers, ISO adopters had higher growth rates for sales, employment, payroll, and average annual earnings. Injury rates declined slightly for ISO 9001 adopters, although total injury costs did not. These results have implications for organizational theory, managers, and public policy.