The ISO 9000 phenomenon has raised a great deal of interest among researchers and has
been widely studied. Internationally, there is a large number of empirical works on ISO
9000 implementation (Brown and Van der Wiele, 1995; Withers and Ebrahimpour, 1996;
Vloeberghs and Bellens, 1996; Terziovski et al., 1997; Romano, 2000, among others).
Analysis of ISO 14000 implementation is not as common in the literature, although
various studies at the international level have been carried out (Van der Welt, 1997;
Nakamura et al., 2001, among others). The results of these investigations are very
diverse, although it is generally possible to say they all highlight the great importance
of external factors, such as the motivating factors behind implementing ISO 14000,
while the main benefits detected have much more to do with bettering relations with
the various stakeholders involved and improving organizational control, rather than
improving quality-related indicators and reducing the environmental impact of
products and services.
There are some recently published studies, which by taking advantage of the
analogies existing between the standards, have compared their diffusion. There is, for
example, an interesting study by Pan (2003) analyzing the motivation for and the
benefits of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 certification in four countries in the Far East: Japan,
Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong. After studying eight aspects common to both cases,
Pan is the first author to detect a strong link between the motivations involved in
implementing ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 and the benefits of certification.
With very similar objectives, the study by Poksinska et al. (2003) in Sweden draws
similar conclusions. They find, for example, a great deal of similarity in the benefits
obtained by applying each standard. This is explained by the fact that the
improvements in organizational efficiency and control brought about by ISO 14000 are
more important benefits for the organization than any actual improvements in
environmental performance.
Literature referring to the diffusion of these standards is very scarce. This is not the
case with studies of the diffusion of various other management tools and systems,
which is a subject that has received great interest on the part of academics from
various fields (the summary by Roger (1995) is very interesting in this respect). In
particular, there have been many investigations into the diffusion of technological
innovations which could also be applied in some form to administrative innovations, as
indicated by Teece (1980), who established that analytical models of the diffusion of
technological innovations are not limited to tangible products. It can be deduced from
these studies that, broadly speaking, the cumulative adoption of innovations over time
follows an S-shaped or sigmoid curve, reflecting the fact that few members of a social
system actually adopt an innovation during the first stages, but as time goes on the
rate of adoption of the innovation rises until the process approaches its saturation
point, whereupon the growth rate begins to fall. Stoneman (1995) points out that this
model is usually a good explanation of the phenomena of diffusion in the field of new
technologies. This is the evidence found in the literature that led to the idea of applying
a similar model to the present case.
For the specific case of management standards, as we have said, the literature is
scarce. Recently, two works have appeared which provide a descriptive analysis of the
diffusion process of the ISO 9000 standard over time. On the one hand, Saraiva and
Duarte (2003) present the first research aimed at predicting how ISO 9000 certification
will develop around the world in the future. From an index calculated according to the
number of ISO 9000 certificates per inhabitant (using a simple regression model), they
identify the leading countries and analyze how the saturation level is close to being
achieved. At the same time, they forecast the development of ISO 9000 certification
between 2002 and 2006. Similarly, a second investigation carried out by Franceschini
et al. (2004) analyzes in greater detail some of the areas examined by Saraiva and
Duarte (2003). Thus, using a modified logistics curve for a fixed population, they first
approach the idea of ISO 9000 diffusion in six European countries, detecting what the
saturation levels are for each country, i.e. the maximum number of companies in each
country that will undergo certification. Although the analysis was only exploratory, it
is very interesting to observe how well the model adjusts to the real data in all the
analyzed countries, which makes it, without doubt, a good starting point for the
present study.
Nevertheless, as far as this study is concerned, the studies carried out by Corbett on
the diffusion of the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 standards are of greater interest. Although
they all deal with the mechanisms of diffusion rather than to actual diffusion over time,
a first study (Corbett and Kirsch, 1999) established that the number of a country’s ISO
14000 certificates is very positively related to the number of ISO 9000 certificates and,
to a lesser degree, to the level of environmentalization (measured by the number of
environmental treaties signed) and the level of exports of the country. In contrast, it is
independent of the country’s level of development. The results obtained in this
investigation were later corroborated in Corbett and Kirsch (2001), not only from the
analyses of the existing data they had used previously, but also from the impressions
received during visits to several ISO 14000-registered companies around the world
(Corbett and Kirsch, 2000). It must be remembered, however, that this study, while
interesting, is of a static nature and does not analyze the development of the two
standards over time. Vastag (2003) further analyzed the resulting data, concluding that
only the number of ISO 9000 certificates and the degree of environmentalization of the
country are related to the total number of ISO 14000 certificates.
Subsequently, Corbett (2003) analyzed the forces that explain the diffusion of these
standards, basing his study on the Bass diffusion model (Bass, 1969), and showing how
it is carried out through the supply chain. His model explains that ISO 9000
certification basically began in Europe and spread from there to other countries
because the European companies put pressure on their suppliers to seek certification.
It also appears from this study that companies exporting goods or services to a certain
region simultaneously import management practices to their company as well as to
their whole area of influence (Corbett, 2003).
We believe these studies are interesting not only because of their capacity to
describe and predict the actual process of diffusion of these international standards,
but also because they offer certain empirical evidence as to whether or not there is an
analogy between the process of diffusion of these standards and the diffusion of
innovations in general. We believe there may be a link between these studies and
others of a theoretical and empirical nature, already becoming traditional in the field of
business management and organization and dealing in particular with the influence of
fashionable practices in business management. Abrahamson (1991, 1996) are the two
studies that stand out in this respect.