The true motives behind ISO 9000 certification: Their effect on the overall certification benefits and long term contribution towards TQM

This paper tests and proves empirically the dramatic effect that an organisation’s true motives towards ISO 9000 certification may have on its future effectiveness and value to the certified companies. The paper reveals the true motives behind ISO 9000 certification for 85 large Greek companies and statistically tests their relationship with: after‐ISO performance and performance improvement in eight basic TQM categories; and the overall benefits gained from certification. The paper also reveals the real quantitative and qualitative “results” that these companies had from the standards implementation, addressing one main deficiency of the standards, which is the absence of requirements related to real “results” in the organisations. Finally, factor analysis is applied in both certification motives and benefits, revealing the main factors/categories of both, and their in‐between relationship.