It is widely accepted that the ISO 9000 series of standards are the most popular
reference model for setting up quality assurance systems in organizations. These
standards, based on the BS 5750 series developed in 1979 by the British Standards
Institution (BSI) in the United Kingdom, were first established in 1987, but their world
wide success was a result of the revision carried out in 1994. The results of the most
recent revision (2000) remain to be seen.
The ISO 9000 standard does not attempt to measure the quality of the products or
services of companies, i.e. they make no reference to achieving a certain objective or
result. They are, instead, standards, which establish the need to systematize and to
formalize company tasks with the objective of producing products, or services that
meet customer demands. In other words, they are a management tool based on the
systematization and formalization of tasks in order to obtain uniformity in the product
and to conform to the specifications established by the customer (Anderson et al., 1999).
On the other hand, the ISO 14000 standard, published in 1996, establishes a
reference model for implementing environmental management systems in companies.
These systems can be defined as the part of a company’s global management which
encompasses the organizational structure, the planning activities, the responsibilities,
practices, procedures, processes and resources required to elaborate, apply, review and
maintain the environmental policy of the company. The structure and philosophy of
ISO 14000 is very similar to ISO 9000. It is not designed to measure the environmental
impact of the companies that implement it, but rather to be a set of standards that
establish how to systematize and formalize the procedures related to the processes of
environmental impact in the company. In fact, during the elaboration of the ISO 14000
standard, the committee that created it, the ISO’s technical committee 207 (ISO/TC207),
quickly realized that for the standard to be widely accepted it had to be compatible
with ISO 9000. That is why, as Poksinska et al. (2003) demonstrate, the implementation
of ISO 9000 clearly facilitated the subsequent implementation of ISO 14000.
The ISO 14000 standard is not a standard of objectives or results, but of procedures.
In addition, as Corbett and Kirsch (1999) state, ISO 14000 focuses on many aspects
other than the environmental ones, and, therefore, should not be thought of as designed
solely for a certain type of company with a high environmental impact, but as a
standard that can be applied to most organizations.
Although there are major similarities between both standards, each series has its
own particular elements to distinguish it from the other. It is noteworthy, for example,
that the ISO 14000 standard does include, although rather weakly and ambiguously, a
reference to meeting certain environmental objectives, since it establishes that
companies will have to commit themselves to meeting the basic standards and
environmental regulations of their respective countries. In addition, ISO 14000 takes
into consideration other stakeholders that ISO 9000 does not.
There is currently a great deal of academic controversy about the integration of
management systems (Beechner and Koch, 1997; Karapetrovic and Willborn, 1998,
among others). In this case it mainly concerns systems of environmental management
and quality, since the integration of each is often confused with the simple fusion of the
documentation of both systems. There is no doubt that the similarities between both
standards – in terms of the design, the language, the structure and the methodology of
certification – facilitates this integration, but such integration must be carried out not
only to cut costs, but also to improve efficiency (Karapetrovic and Willborn, 1998).
In terms of the diffusion of the two standards, it is well known that they have been
very successful, particularly the ISO 9000 standard. The latest data provided by
ISO (ISO, 2003) indicates that in December of 2002 there were already 561,747
certifications in 159 countries with ISO 9000-certified companies around the world.
When the ISO 14000 standard was published, there were already 127,349 ISO 9000
certifications. Like ISO 9000, ISO 14000 has also spread throughout the world, although,
so far, not with as much success. The latest available data, also from December of 2002
(ISO, 2003), indicates that there were 49,462 certifications in a total of 118 countries.
Having said that, just how has this diffusion come about? Do they follow analogous
models? If both standards follow parallel paths, could they be extrapolated to other, subsequent standards? These are the main issues raised in this work, since in the
literature only the diffusion of the ISO 9000 standard has received much attention.
In its early stages, ISO 9000 began to spread around the world from European
Union countries, specifically from the United Kingdom, where these standards
originated. In 1996, more than 62 percent of certificates in the world were found in the
EU (of which more than 50 percent had been issued in the United Kingdom and the
number of certificates issued in Austria and the Netherlands was also very high
compared to other EU countries). This may have been due, to a large extent, to the fact
that various administrations and European institutions very actively supported the
use of ISO 9000 in working towards harmonization in the European Union (Peach,
2002). The ISO 14000 standard, on the other hand, did not spread in the same way
because the factors that stimulated and promoted its propagation were different, as has
been analyzed in the literature (Corbett and Kirsch, 2001; Nakamura et al., 2001; Pan,
2003; Poksinska et al., 2003). An analysis of the density of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000
certificates in European Union countries during 2002 is presented in Table I, an index
of our own design that measures the relationship between the percentage of certificates
in each country with respect to the European total and each country’s percentage
contribution to the European GDP[1].
The results obtained are shown graphically in Figure 1, which clearly shows how
little a relationship there is between the two. It is clear, for example, that the Nordic
countries have a low intensity of ISO 9000 certifications and, yet, have among the
highest intensities of ISO 14000 certifications. In short, just as Corbett and Kirsch
(2001) have pointed out, there are countries that lead the way in movements such as
these and in Europe the Nordic countries (which are historically the most
environmentally proactive) have assumed this role and head the ranking in
certifications of this type. In contrast, ISO 14000 certification is noticeably less
important in the United Kingdom, despite it being the historical world leader in
ISO 9000 certifications.