Adoption of Iso 9001 Quality Management Standard and Operational Performance of Service Organizations in Kenya

Abstract

This study sought to establish how the performance of service organizations is influenced by the adoption of ISO 9001 standards. The standards are intended to assist organizations of all sectors and sizes to implement and operate an effective quality management system. The generic nature of the standards allows interested companies to determine the specifics of how the standards apply to their organizations. Registration or certification to the standards demonstrates to customers that the supplying organization has achieved a basic level of quality assurance by the formalization and documentation of its quality management system.

The study applied a descriptive survey to obtain information concerning the current status of the phenomena to describe "what exists" with respect to variables or conditions in the service sector. A census survey was conducted on 53 service organizations with target respondents being operations managers, quality managers and implementers of ISO 9001 QMS in the respective organizations. This was drawn from the list ISO 9001 service organizations that had valid certification as at July, 2012 after being audited by the Kenya Bureau of Standards. Structured personal interviews were used to collect responses. A Likert Scale Questionnaire was used to assess the level of indulgence to the elements of the installation and implementation of ISO 9001quality management system as well as how they perceived the improvement in measures of operational performance as a result of adopting the quality management standard.

It was established that the implementation of ISO 9001 is beneficial in terms of improving the operational performance. It was found that the most important factors that guided the implementation efforts are external coordination and internal integration as these were the most important for both internally and externally motivated organizations.