Like other public sector industries (Hughes, 2003), PSMI had good times when its
market was protected by GOI and it could earn profits notwithstanding the
manufacturing cost. PSMI started facing difficulties after liberalisation of the economy
and globalisation of business in India. The company did nothing for facing the hard
realities of the market. As the quality problems multiplied, PSMI’s corporate quality
head decided to implement ISO 9000, preferring it to TQM (Srivastav, 2007). Strategic
decision was taken to exploit the opportunity to finalise the documentation of
processes and procedures only after examining their adequacy and improving them
with the creative involvement of organisational members. In this manner, negative
manifestations due to the flip side of ISO 9000 were minimised. Zakaria (1998) has
reported implementation of ISO 9000 for improving public services in Malaysia.
Huarng et al. (1999) support such an approach, pointing out that motivation with which
ISO 9000 is implemented decides the outcome of its implementation