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

David Levine and Michael Toffel

No 09-018, Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School

Abstract: Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 Quality Management System 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 non-adopters. 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.

Keywords: ISO 9001; quality management; standards; occupational health and safety; wages; labor; empirical; California (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2008-08, Revised 2010-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (77)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers (2010)
Working Paper: Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard forQuality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers (2008)
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