Losing autonomy: The ISO 9000 standards in the German mechanical engineering industry.

摘要

The ISO 9000 series of quality management standards quickly became over the past decade the sine qua non of doing business for manufacturing firms the world over. However this series was written with a very specific type of firm in mind, and it fails to account for any preexisting national traditions of quality in a firm's production processes. What is the effect of grafting the ISO 9000 standards onto a country's manufacturing industry? Are there differential effects based on firm organization?; To address these questions, the study focuses on the German mechanical engineering industry. Germany was chosen for its particular heritage of Qualitätsarbeit, or quality work. This manner of integrating quality in production has been very successful over the past century, forming the foundation of Germany's reputation for producing goods of very high quality. The grafting of the ISO 9000 standard, with its divergent philosophical foundations as to what constitutes “quality” and how “quality” can best be attained, onto German industry should not be expected to proceed without difficulties.; Primary and secondary research were conducted in Baden-Württemberg during 1997 and 1998, including interviews with firms and with representatives of Germany's standards-setting organizations. The study finds that the implementation of ISO 9000 has serious effects on management's autonomy, the traditional locus of all decision-making. Under ISO 9000, management loses control over quality both to production workers and to external actors. By contrast, the firm's production workers see their autonomy increase, especially in the realm of decisions about the “quality” of their work. This finding was unexpected and has significant implications for firms who have already attained ISO 9000 certification.