Faking ISO 9001 in China: An exploratory study

Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria and Olivier Boiral

Business Horizons, 2019, vol. 62, issue 1, 55-64

Abstract: Over 1.5 million ISO 9001 certificates are in effect worldwide, 30 years after this quality management standard was launched. As the factory of the world, China is by far the leading country for ISO 9001, in terms of both absolute and relative numbers and growth. Nevertheless, practitioners have cast doubts on the reliability of adopting ISO third-party quality certification in this country. In-depth interviews with 40 senior quality managers, consultants, and auditors with broad field experience and other complementary methods paints a disturbing picture. The widespread prevalence of fake ISO 9001 certificates is indicated, together with an eroded credibility of the process of third-party certification. We discuss the profound implications of the study—including whether or not the phenomenon is restricted to China—and introduce suggestions for managers and other stakeholders, as well as avenues for further research.

Keywords: ISO 9001; Quality management system; Third-party certification; Fake certification; Business regulations in China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681318301435
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:62:y:2019:i:1:p:55-64

DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2018.08.008

Access Statistics for this article

Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton

More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().