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The financial impact of a withdrawn ISO 9001 certificate

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Abstract(s)

The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent the loss of the ISO 9001 certification affects the decertified firms’ financial performance. Design/methodology/approach – Using standard event-study methods, this paper matches a sample of 143 Portuguese companies that lost their ISO 9001 certification with similar non-event counterpart firms (according to return-on-assets and size) and compares the performance of these two groups of firms using financial data collected from the AMADEUS database. Findings – Results show no statistical significant differences in the financial performance (as measured by return-on-assets, return-on-sales, and sales growth) between companies that lost their ISO 9001 certification and their matched firms. Although the literature suggests that certification improves firms’ performance and that the benefits of certification may last over long periods of time, this paper’s results suggest that, after decertification, companies do not exhibit over or underperformance in their operations vis-à-vis comparable firms that do not undergo the same event. Originality/value – As far as the authors are aware, this is the first study assessing the impact of ISO 9001 certificate withdrawal on the decertified firms’ financial performance.

Description

The authors thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. The authors thank also Jennifer Nicole Elston and Mário Luís Miranda Soares for their help. Finally, the authors are pleased to acknowledge the financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and FEDER/COMPETE (grant UID/ECO/04007/2013).

Keywords

ISO 9000 ISO 9001 Event study Certificate withdrawal Decertification Loss of certificate Financial impact

Citation

Cândido, Carlos J.F., L.M.S. Coelho e R.M.T. Peixinho (2016) The financial impact of a withdrawn ISO 9001 Certificate, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 36(1), 23-41.

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