Modelling firms’ interventions in ISO 9001 certification: A configurational approach

Abstract

Firms are subject to various external audits and certifications, which provide an external assessment of firms’ operational practices. The literature has focused so far on immediate effects of external certifications overlooking the patterns of activities and interventions that firms pursue to maintain their certifications. In this paper, we employ the configurational approach to empirically test a theory on firms’ intervention in the maintenance stages of ISO 9001 certification. The theory is causally asymmetric in nature and examines causal configurations of antecedent conditions (firms size, year certified, institutional pressure, board pressure, motivation and complexity of firm’s operations) that result in firms’ pursuit of more (or less) complex interventions and firms’ high (or low) intensity of interventions. Using a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and in-depth data from 15 cases, the study reveals strong support for causal asymmetry, complexity and equifinality and provides nine models to explain complexity and intensity of firms’ interventions. The study addresses two gaps in the literature – maintenance stages of certification are poorly understood and a configurational approach is largely lacking in studies on voluntary certification.