Modelling firms’ interventions in ISO 9001 certification: A configurational approach

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Abstract

Firms are subject to various external audits and certifications, which provide an external assessment of firms’ operational practices. The literature has focused so far on immediate effects of external certifications overlooking the patterns of activities and interventions that firms pursue to maintain their certifications. In this paper, we employ the configurational approach to empirically test a theory on firms’ intervention in the maintenance stages of ISO 9001 certification. The theory is causally asymmetric in nature and examines causal configurations of antecedent conditions (firms size, year certified, institutional pressure, board pressure, motivation and complexity of firm’s operations) that result in firms’ pursuit of more (or less) complex interventions and firms’ high (or low) intensity of interventions. Using a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and in-depth data from 15 cases, the study reveals strong support for causal asymmetry, complexity and equifinality and provides nine models to explain complexity and intensity of firms’ interventions. The study addresses two gaps in the literature – maintenance stages of certification are poorly understood and a configurational approach is largely lacking in studies on voluntary certification.

Introduction

Firms’ operational and supply chain management practices are increasingly subject to external audits, compliance activities and independent certifications (Porteous et al., 2015), for instance for quality (ISO 9001), environment (ISO 14001, EMAS), health & safety (OHSAS 18001), energy efficiency, carbon emissions and many others (Anderson et al., 1999, Corbett and Kirsch, 2001, Gray et al., 2015, Hassini et al., 2012, Kleindorfer et al., 2005, Pagell et al., 2014). It takes about 12–18 months to implement the requirements of a certification and get certified (Corbett, 2006, Singh et al., 2006). A vast majority of the literature concentrates on these “early stages” in the certification life-cycle and their immediate impact1 (Heras-Saizarbitoria and Boiral, 2012). However, firms tend to maintain their certifications for decades – which is a practice in, for instance, supply chains such as Samsung, Toyota, DuPond or Coca-Cola who require adherence to ISO certifications long term. In the context of ISO certifications, the growth of new entrants reached its saturation (Viadiu et al., 2006) and the number of newly certified firms is significantly lower than the number of firms who were certified for 10 years or more. Surprisingly, the literature largely overlooks the long term aspects of certification (Castka and Corbett, 2015). Given that firms put a considerable investment (direct and indirect) into their certifications, how do firms maintain their certifications over time? We investigate the maintenance stage of certification in the context of ISO 9001 certification even though – as we explain later – the results are transferable to a broader context of voluntary certification, for instance for environmental and social standards and eco-labels (Castka and Corbett, 2016a, Castka and Corbett, 2016b, Prado and Woodside, 2015).

Several theoretical perspectives may explain the “maintenance stage” of certification. From the institutional theory perspective, firms adopt management practices (such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications) due to coercive, mimetic and normative forces (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Institutional theory has been used to explain various facets of ISO certification, e.g. that standards diffuse due to coercion in supply chains (Corbett, 2006), that multinational corporations contribute to the diffusion of standards across countries (Guler et al., 2002); that institutional forces contribute to symbolic rather than substantial adoption in certified firms (Boiral, 2011, 2003) or that firms adopt certifications due to institutionalization in their industry sectors (Lo et al., 2011). It is plausible that coercive, mimetic and normative forces might continue to influence how firms maintain their certification. For instance, firms might be coerced to keep the existing certification or to adopt further certifications in response to pressures from their suppliers (Castka and Balzarova, 2010, Karapetrovic and Jonker, 2003). Latter stages of the certification may be viewable from a perspective of the attitude theory (Bagozzi, 1992). This theory argues that firms are satisfied with a certification only if their expectations are achieved. In the certification context, the expectations from certification are often described along the continuum “basic conformance to standards’ requirements” and “learning from standards” (Karapetrovic and Willborn, 2001). In other words, firms might approach certification with a genuine motivation to incorporate the requirements of the standard in their operations or, on the other hand, to comply with the baseline requirements in a symbolic manner (Boiral, 2003). Based on the attitude theory, firms may intervene in order to realize their expectations. Castka and Corbett (2015) have for instance shown that firms select their certification intermediary in line with this logic but whether and how firms would intervene beyond the selection of their certification intermediary is unclear. Further theoretical insight might be gained from the diffusion of innovation literature. The certification ‘life-cycle’ in fact follows a pattern of the diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1962, Teece, 1980) and during this cycle, firms pursue different approaches to adopt standards (Ivanova et al., 2014) and to intervene (Castka and Balzarova, 2018).

The research into certification has been building on these theoretical perspectives (Tuczek et al., 2018) as well as on the use of multivariate statistical methods and case based studies (Castka and Corbett, 2015). A typical approach to studying certification is to reveal effects that are linear, additive and unifinal in nature and to investigate a set of variables that “compete” rather than combine to produce an outcome (Fiss, 2007). However, Prado and Woodside (2015) questioned the symmetrical approach and argued that a configurational approach might better serve to capture the complexities in the certification. The configurational approach argues that combinations of variables determine multiple paths, which lead to an outcome (Ragin, 2008a) and configurational approach holds a considerable promise to unravel complexities of management decision making (Fiss, 2007). Prado and Woodside (2015) demonstrated that (in line with the configurational approach) adoption of certifications is indeed complex, asymmetrical and equifinal – a point also highlighted by Cai and Jun (2018).

In this paper, we combine these two perspectives that are omitted in the literature to study the interventions in ISO 9000 certified firms. We ask “under what conditions do firms pursue more complex and intense interventions?”. Building on the work of Castka and Balzarova (2018),2 who identified a typology of interventions in the maintenance stage of certification, we develop a theory of complexity and intensity of interventions to empirically describe the antecedent conditions that result in two outcomes: firms’ pursuit of high (low) complexity of interventions (e.g. a variety of interventions that a firm adopts) as well as high (low) intensity of interventions (e.g. the effort that a firm puts in the pursuit of such interventions). The underlying assumption in this study is that both outcomes (complexity of interventions and intensity of interventions) symbolize the value3 that an organisation and/or their stakeholders assign to a certification. The high complexity of interventions, for instance, indicates that a firm pursues multiple interventions to realize enhanced value of certification that otherwise remains unexplored. In contrast, low complexity of interventions demonstrates that a firm focuses on baseline value of certification. The second important feature of this study is the application of the configurational approach. By adopting the configurational approach, we unravel the complexities of the interventions and show multiple pathways that lead to the outcomes. More precisely, we determine a set of causal configurations of antecedent conditions (firms size, year certified, institutional pressure, board pressure, motivation and complexity of firm’s operations) that lead to pursuit of interventions. The study is based on a qualitative enquiry in 15 case study firms. The data was collected on firm’s premises using semi-structured interviews, informal interviews and document review. A fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is used for the analysis.

The paper is organised in the following way. We firstly discuss Empirical Settings and Conceptual Foundations of our study. This section provides background to firms’ interventions in the context of ISO 9001 certification, a discussion of configurational theory, outlines our theory of firms’ interventions in ISO 9001 certification and develops a set of 3 propositions (P1, P2, P3) based on the configurational approach. Second, Methodology section provides a discussion of our sample, data collection and our approach to data analysis. This section also discusses the software (fsQCA) and its procedures. We follow with Findings section, where P1single bondP3 are used to present the results. Finally, in Discussion, we scrutinize our findings, discuss the linkages with the literature and also discuss implications of our study for scholars and practitioners.

Section snippets

Firms’ involvement with ISO 9001 certification

ISO 9001 certification has been around since 1987 and since its introduction, attracted more than a million of participating firms. Initially the uptake have been concentrated in few locations (EU, Japan, Australia), yet later the standard diffused across the globe and became a truly global phenomenon. ISO 9001 governance system is also globally unified: accreditation bodies accredit Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs), CABs send their auditors to verify firms’ practices and certify individual

Method

This study uses a case based method to study firms’ interventions in the maintenance stages of their certifications (Yin, 1994). There are several reasons for this approach. First, there is a good understanding of the early stages of the certification life-cycle yet there is comparatively less understating of the latter stages. Even though we have based the study on the existing literature and the configurational approach, there is lack of understanding of the practices and interventions in the

Findings

In this section, we report the results from fsQCA analysis and discuss the findings in relation to the theory on interventions and Propositions 1–3. The results are presented in Table 5, Table 6, Table 7, Table 8 and cover four outcome conditions. The results fully support the propositions of our theory. We also discuss the result as related to individual antecedent conditions and their role in firms’ pursuit of interventions.

P1a - SUPPORTED

No single complex configuration of antecedent conditions is

Discussion

Configurational approach takes a holistic and systemic view of organisations and provides a complex understanding of organisational outcomes (Ragin, 2008a). This approach has been adopted in several fields of management, such as strategy (Fiss, 2007), corporate responsibility performance (Isaksson and Wooside, 2016) or marketing (Woodside et al., 2015) yet much less applied in the field of operations management (Dul et al., 2010) and in the context of voluntary standards (Prado and Woodside,

Conclusion

The studies of ISO 9001 certification have largely neglected the maintenance stages of certification as well as configuration and complexity viewpoints to explain the outcomes of certification. At the outset of the paper, we posed a question “under what conditions do firms pursue more complex and intense interventions?” In response to this question, we have developed a Theory of Complexity and Intensity of Firms’ Interventions in the ISO 9001 certification and demonstrated that multiple

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