ISO 9001 & ISO 14000 diffusion analysis according to activity sectors

[ENG] There is no doubt that the interest that ISO standard has aroused in the academic field has its parallel in industry. Up to the end of December 2009, at least 1,064,785 ISO 9001 (2000 and 2008) certificates had been issued in 178 countries and economies. The 2009 total represents an increase of 81,953 (+ 8%) over 2008, when the total was 982,832 in 176 countries and economies. On the other hand, regarding to the other family of standards, also up to the end of December 2009, at least 223,149 ISO 14001:2004 certificates had been issued in 159 countries and economies. Annual growth is stabilized at almost the same level as in 2008 – 34,334 in 2009, compared to 34,242 in 2008, when the total was 188,815 in 155 countries and economies (ISO 2010). The diffusion of the both standards (ISO 9001 and ISO 14011) have in fact been widely analysed, but there is a bias in the perspective used: there are some papers that focus on the patterns of evolution in its geographical dissemination (e.g., Saraiva and Duarte, 2003, Franceschini et al., 2004, Marimon et al., 2006 and 2009, Albuquerque et al., 2007, Casadesus et al., 2008; Sampaio et al., 2009, Franceschini et al., 2010), while we have not found literature that focus on the dissemination within the industrial or service activity sectors, independently of the localization of the companies certificated. The objective of the paper is, therefore, to analyse the way the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards spread in a particular sector: is this pattern similar for all sectors or does each sector have its own peculiarities? Whether it is the same or not, the analysis of mature sectors with regard to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications might give a clue to practitioners about other sectors that are at earlier stages in terms of diffusion. The structure of the paper in order to achieve the objective has five sections. After this introduction, a literature review will be explored in the second section. In the third section the methodology will be described, as well as the methodology and results. The discussion and conclusions will be done in the last section.This study is part of a larger research project entitled “Customers’ satisfaction improvement in Spanish organizations through standardization” (ECO2009-12754-CO2-01), which is financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation within the aid program for research & development projects

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