Simultaneous consideration of TQM and ISO 9000 on performance and motivation: An empirical study of Spanish companies

After more than two decades since quality became part of managers' everyday lexicon, total quality management (TQM) and ISO 9000 have taken the centre stage. However, there has been much debate about how they might be related to each other. This research is a new contribution to the knowledge on the relationships between TQM and ISO 9000, and it addresses their implications on performance and motivations for implementation. While past studies have considered them separately, we study them together in one study. As might be expected, both TQM and ISO 9000 lead to improvement in performance. However, it appears that internal motivation to implement ISO 9000 is associated with high performance, whereas external motivation is not. Further, companies with high internal motivation for ISO 9000 naturally show a high level of TQM practices. We use institutional theory and resource-based views to consider the internal versus external motivations for implementing ISO 9000. The data for this research have been obtained from a large sample of Spanish industrial companies. Longitudinal objective data have also been used.