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C. Capmany et al. / International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 3 (2000) 41-53
management. Similarly, agribusiness firms, in the U.S., and elsewhere, have been slow to
become ISO 9000 certified. In this study ISO 9000 certified U.S. firms are investigated to
ascertain their level of satisfaction with the QMS, reasons for attaining certification, and
perceptions of the impact ISO 9000 has had on firm performance, and marketing relation-
ships with customers and suppliers.
Concerns over the applicability of ISO 9000 QMS to U.S. agribusinesses, uncertainty over
the costs and benefits of the series, and the interaction of this particular third party certifi-
cation process with other sets of controls [e.g., those targeting food safety attributes such as
Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)-based QMS] have all been raised. This
paper provides early evidence of the impacts of ISO 9000 QMS thereby addressing these
concerns.
2. Background
ISO 9000 developed out of the British BS 5750 quality standards, being adapted for wider
use in 1987 with the publication of its first edition. The series is managed by the International
Organization for Standardization, a nongovernmental body made up of national standard
setting bodies from some 133 countries. It attempts to harmonize voluntary industrial
standards to facilitate international trade. However, the member bodies need not be and often
are not government agencies. The U.S., for example, is represented by the American National
Standards Institute and not the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the standard
setting division of the U.S. Department of Commerce (Hooker and Caswell, 1999).
Certification to a particular ISO 9000 standard (either 9001, 9002, or 9003 with progres-
sively narrower requirements) demonstrates a firms’ quality planing, control, assurance, and
improvement systems conform to an internationally agreed format. The ISO 9000 framework
is built on twenty clauses or requirements, broad areas that impact all these areas of quality
management (see Table 1). ISO 9001 is the most complete option covering all 20 clauses.
ISO 9002 excludes 4.4 (design control) and is thus considered best suited to food processing
facilities without research and development divisions. ISO 9003 is the least restrictive
system, intended for operations that demonstrate conformance only via final inspection and
testing and is recommended for commodity suppliers.
Research relating to agribusiness and ISO 9000 certification is very limited. For example,
Bredahl, Holleran, and Zaibet (1994) provide a descriptive analysis of ISO 9000 in the U.K.
food sector. Holleran and Bredahl (1997) found that in the U.K. the standard tended to be
adopted in areas of the food sector where transaction costs were high (e.g., the soft drink and
alcohol sectors). Zaibet and Bredahl (1997) suggested that in the U.K. meat sector (1) ISO
9000 certification could soon become a common business practice, (2) the cost of certifica-
tion did not represent a significant constraint to adoption of the QMS, and (3) cost shifting
due to ISO 9000 at the input-supplier level generated gains to both beef producers and consumers.
3. Data collection
The target population for the study consisted of ISO 9000 certified firms in the United
States. A list of these certified firms was obtained from a well-established ISO 9000