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The ISO 9000 Specification for Quality Management Systems, and ISO 14001 Specification for Environmental Management Systems are both specification standards which carry with them ‘third party’ certification schemes. The standards body (ISO or its agent) provides certificates of compliance to an organisation provided that it has successfully passed an audit by an approved or accredited auditor (the third party).
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However, confusion has arisen about such standards particularly in relation to their status. There are also frequently unrealistic expectations of a ‘clockwork’ cause-effect relationship between applying such standards and achieving rapid success. The relationship between certification and actual quality or environmental performance in a particular organisation is very debatable. The models and approaches incorporated are over-simplified and naive as paradigms for success. The ISO 9000 certificates only attest to compliance with minimal requirements for documentation and procedures, and these do not address actual product quality. It is, therefore, questionable whether such certificates represent passports to markets, rather than a guarantee of a company’s products per se (Waring, 1996b). Binney et al. (1993) and Wilkinson et al. (1993) are two relevant independent studies supporting this. Proponents of certification often point to the large number of organisations which have become certified as evidence of the value of certification. However, experience suggests that many certified organisations only demand that their suppliers be certified because the scheme requires it and not because they believe that certification necessarily brings added value. If becoming certified requires that only other certified suppliers are used, then the so-called ‘demand’ is little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a danger of certification becoming not a measure of high quality but a measure of, at best, mediocrity among weak and average organisations seeking to bolster their image and self-confidence. The message from enthusiasts is lemming-like: ‘Jumping over the ISO 9000 cliff will be good for you. Join us and the thousands of others who have jumped over before you’. Widespread concerns about the weaknesses of certification standards for safety management systems (SMS) have been raised, especially if compliance certificates would encourage false inferences about full compliance with government safety regulations and absence of hazards. Auditing in the safety field requires professionally qualified safety auditors, whereas ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 specify no comparable requirement. The requirements specified in ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 series and auditor qualifications at present fall far short of what would be absolute minimum requirements in the health and safety and major hazards fields. The British Standard for SMS (BS 8800:1996) was based loosely on Guidance Document HS(G) 65 (HSE, 1991) and thus was a guide and not a specification. In November 2008, BS 8800 was replaced by BS 18004 “Guide to Achieving Effective Occupational Health and Safety Performance”; It had been embraced by the International standard OHSAS 18001 developed to be compatible with ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and to unify standards for OHS management systems. International cooperation also led to the launch In September 2005 of ISO 22000 Food Safety Management standards for use throughout the food supply chain.
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