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International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 15, 47–65 (2013)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2370.2012.00334.x

ISO 9001 and ISO 14001: Towards a

Research Agenda on Management
System Standards* ijmr_334 47..65

Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria and Olivier Boiral1

Department of Management, E.U.E. Empresariales, University of the Basque Country UPV-EHU, Plaza Oñati 1,
20018, San Sebastian, Spain, and 1Département de management, Faculté des sciences de l’administration, Université
Laval, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, 2325, rue de la Terrasse, Local 1638, Québec, Québec G1V 0A6, Canada
Corresponding author email: iheras@ehu.es

Management system standards, also called meta-standards, have been adopted by an

increasing number of organizations across the world. Although these management
system standards are based on the same type of management principles and institutional
arrangements, the literature remains scattered, with diverse studies focused on specific
standards and published in various journals. The main objective of this paper is to
analyse the academic research on meta-standards through an integrative review
intended to shed light on the main conclusions and substantial advances made in this
area. This integrative review focuses more specifically on the two main meta-standards
which have been adopted by more than 1.3 million organizations worldwide: ISO 14001
and ISO 9001.The paper contributes insights into the main streams of the literature and
current knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research on the various issues related
to meta-standards: global governance, diffusion processes, motivations, benefits of
adoption and impacts on performance, internalization, integration, consultancy and
auditing.

Introduction responsibility (e.g. SA 8000). These standards tend

The development of management standards now
encompasses a very wide range of aspects of busi-
ness activity, such as quality management (e.g. ISO
9001), environmental management (e.g. ISO 14001),
the prevention of occupational hazards and the pro-
vision of health and safety regulations in the work-
place (e.g. OHSAS 18000), and corporate social
*This article is a result of a Research Project funded by the
Basque Autonomous Government (GIC 10/89) and the
Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (ECO2009-
12754). The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to
the Co-Editor-in-Chief of IJMR Oswald Jones and to the
three reviewers for their assistance; their constructive criti-
cism and suggestions helped us to improve and develop the
paper substantively.
to use quite similar methodology with regard to
their creation, structure, implementation process and
monitoring by a third party, a trend that was estab-
lished by the successful ISO 9001 and ISO 14001
standards. Indeed, it should be taken into account
that, by late 2010, over 1,100,000 ISO 9001 certifi-
cates and 250,000 ISO 14001 certificates had been
authorized in a total of 178 countries all over the
world (ISO 2011; see Figure 1).
Similarly, standards-based management is a
research field that has received a lot of attention in
recent years, owing to the great success enjoyed by
management standards all over the world. In our
opinion, therefore, it is important to review the differ-
ent approaches to the study of standardization in a
management context, so as to attempt to synthesize

© 2012 The Authors

International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA
02148, USA
48
Figure 1. Worldwide ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification. Source: ISO Survey (ISO 2011)
and thus improve academic knowledge, which is
in the interests of the various different stakeholders
involved (i.e. managers, consultants, policy-makers
and researchers).
This work represents an attempt to analyse in depth
the class of standards known as management system
standards (MSS), also referred to as meta-standards
(Uzumeri 1997), and which have been so successful
in recent years. In this paper, a review of the substan-
tial advances made in the field of this subject of study
is carried out; the review comes within the category
of integrative reviews, works ‘that seek to merge
findings from related areas’ (Macpherson and Jones
2010, p. 109). Moreover, a research agenda for the
field is proposed. The paper focuses on the two main
global management standards at the international
level: ISO 14001 and ISO 9001.
A systematic literature review was carried out
in order to identify the most prominent theoretical
and empirical academic works on the topic. In short,
the ABI/Inform, Emerald and Science Direct data-
bases were used to perform literature searches with
the following keywords: (1) ISO 9000, ISO 9001,
ISO 14001, ISO 14000; (2) ISO standards; (3) meta-
standard; and (4) management system standard/s.
The main contribution of this paper is to provide
an integrative review of the multifaceted literature on
meta-standards, to analyse the main conclusions of
studies carried out from different perspectives and to
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
I. Heras-Saizarbitoria and O. Boiral
propose various avenues for future research based
on the knowledge gaps identified. The remainder of
the paper is organized as follows. Following this
introduction, the paper presents a short overview
of standardization and MSS or meta-standards. In
the third section, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 are briefly
analysed, followed by a fourth section in which an
attempt is made to synthesize the main theoretical
perspectives or approaches applied to the analysis of
those meta-standards in academic studies. The fifth
section constitutes an outline map of the main areas
of research undertaken to date and the areas in which,
in the authors’ opinion, research should be under-
taken in the future. The paper ends with a summary
of the main conclusions.
Standardization and meta-standards
Standardization constitutes a mechanism of coordi-
nation and an instrument of regulation comparable
with other instruments, such as public regulations,
markets and hierarchies or formal organizations
(Antonelli 1998; Brunsson and Jacobsson 2000). In
a global economy, without standardization and its
results – technical standards or specifications – inter-
changes would become exceedingly difficult. Stand-
ardization can, then, stimulate international trade by
eliminating obstacles arising from different national
© 2012 The Authors
Research Agenda on Management System Standards
practices. Thus, standards are important for the
promotion of economic efficiency, as they provide a
basis for reducing information-related transaction
costs (Nadvi and Wältring 2004).
Focusing on the specific case of management
standards, in their monograph on standardization
Brunsson and Jacobsson (2000) refer repeatedly
to ‘standards for administrative processes’, and
Furusten (2000, p. 71), in the same monograph,
defines management standards as ‘standards on
how to design and manage organizations’. We can
explicitly identify these administrative standards
with what we would define here as MSS, a term
that already has a certain tradition of academic
acceptance behind it in studies relating to quality
management and environmental management (e.g.
Corbett and Kirsch 2001; Delmas 2002; Karapetro-
vic 2002; Neumayer and Perkins 2004; Wilkinson
and Dale 2001).
In the literature on the subject, MSS are often
called meta-standards (e.g. Boiral 2001; Braun 2005;
Christmann and Taylor 2006; Corbett and Yeung
2008; Karapetrovic and Willborn 1998; Wilkinson
and Dale 1999). Uzumeri (1997) refers to them as
‘lists of design rules to guide the creation of entire
classes of management systems. Since systems theo-
rists use the term metasystem for lists of this type, it
follows that this type of management standard should
be referred to as a meta-standard’ (Uzumeri 1997,
p. 22). Corbett and Yeung (2008) use the term meta-
standard ‘loosely to refer to standards that apply to
broad processes (rather than individual products) and
to entire families of such process standards’ (Corbett
and Yeung 2008, p. 1).
These management standards are, of course, to be
distinguished from the technical norms and specifi-
cations relating to those requirements with which
particular products or processes need to comply.
Even so, such a broad definition of standardization
in the field of management could encompass, for
example, international norms and guidelines deal-
ing with accountancy and audits (the International
Standards on Auditing, for instance) or such general
management models as that of the EFQM (Euro-
pean Foundation for Quality Management). These
guidelines and models are based on a set of guide-
lines and benchmarks developed by specific organ-
izations and referring to a particular field of
management. Although the focus and content of
MSS may be quite different, their principles, struc-
ture, terminology and certification processes share
common characteristics.
© 2012 The Authors
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
49
ISO 9001 and ISO 14001: the first
global meta-standards
The ISO 9001 standard does not refer to compliance
with an objective or with a particular result. That
is, it is not a performance standard measuring the
quality of companies’ products or services. Rather,
ISO 9001 proposes guidelines to systematize and
formalize a series of company processes into a series
of procedures, and to document this implementation.
ISO 9001 standardizes procedures, duties and roles,
rather than goals or outcomes (Braun 2005; Guler
et al. 2002).
Compliance with ISO 9001, which can be certified
by an institution accredited for this purpose, requires
documentation to show the implementation of a
quality management system, including standardized
and documented procedures on the basic processes
used to produce the product or service which
the customer acquires. ISO 9001 standard is thus a
management tool based on the systematization and
formalization of tasks in order to achieve product
homogeneity and to conform to the specifications
established by the customer (Anderson et al. 1999).
Similarly, ISO 14001 does not fix environmen-
tal goals or environmental targets to be achieved
(requirements for the prevention and reduction of
the impact of pollution, for instance), as a result of
the possible attainment of which a certificate would
be obtained. Rather, this standard establishes require-
ments defining the operational systems to be com-
plied with within companies in relation to activities
which have an environmental impact (Delmas 2001;
King and Lenox 2001). It is a model which provides
a systematic framework within which to incorporate
environmental concerns into a company’s day-to-day
operations.
From a global perspective, the successful diffusion
of these MSS or meta-standards would appear to be
closely linked to the basic impetus of the process
of globalization of the Western economies, to the
extending global supply chains and the still growing
importance of transnational corporations (Braun
2005). In the current economic environment, in
which outsourcing and relocation of companies’
activities have become key strategic elements of
global supply chains, it is necessary to foster a
certain homogeneity of management systems in
order to favour the development of such processes,
and MSS may help to achieve this aim. As Boiral
(2001, p. 80) states: ‘the development of manage-
ment standards is part of the growing globalization
50
of the world economy, which requires the adoption of
international standards that facilitate exchanges and
communication between countries’.
Approaches to the academic study
of meta-standards
Introduction
Standardization of management systems and its end-
product, meta-standards, constitute a clear example
of a multidimensional phenomenon which has impli-
cations of an extremely varied nature. It is for this
reason that they have been studied from the perspec-
tive of a variety of disparate but related disciplines,
such as international economics, management stu-
dies (and, more specifically, the study of operations
management) and organizational sociology.
In this section of the paper, an attempt will be made
to produce a synthesis of these approaches.1 First, the
different theoretical approaches will be structured in
three main groups: (1) technical approaches, in which
we would place the standpoint of Operation Manage-
ment and other technical standpoints involving a
study of the meta-standards that refer to more or less
general, mature fields such as Quality Management,
Environmental Management and System Thinking,
among others; (2) non-technical approaches, with
the following four sub-approaches: self-regulation,
decentralized institutions and signalling models,
cartels and clubs and New Institutionalism; and (3)
other approaches, in which we have grouped various
pieces of research based on eclectic works and which
are, consequently, difficult to classify.
The following two subsections focus on the
presentation of the first two general approaches.
The main works published in the literature could
be included in them. In the research perspective that
we have generically named ‘other approaches’, we
include other works from various different stand-
points, such as works of a pragmatic nature carried
out from the standpoint of international economics
and international business, those that focus on the
same standpoint but which are clearly critical (e.g.
Clapp 2001), highlight new challenges regarding
1
At this point we would like to express our gratitude for the
guidance provided by one of the three reviewers of this
paper, as this helped us in the complex structuring work of
the different standpoints referred to in the study that have
analysed meta-standards.
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
I. Heras-Saizarbitoria and O. Boiral
governance and regulation2 (e.g. Haufler 1999), those
carried out from the standpoint of economic geogra-
phy (e.g. Neumayer and Perkins 2004, 2005) and
more eclectic works which are difficult to classify
(e.g. Naveh and Marcus 2004; Rondinelli and Vastag
2000).
Technical approaches
These approaches focus on the practical implications
of meta-standards for organizations (e.g. Anderson
et al. 1999; Benner and Veloso 2008; Casadesús and
Karapetrovic 2005; Corbett and Kirsch 2001; Corbett
and Yeung 2008; Martínez-Costa et al. 2008, 2009;
Terziovski et al. 2003). Thus, a great deal of research
has focused on the measurement of meta-standards’
impacts in the field of operations management,
quality management, environmental management and
supply chain management (for a recent review of the
works published on ISO 9001 from this perspective,
see Sampaio et al. 2009). This measurement generally
uses quantitative surveys, which have played a domi-
nant role in the literature. Studies on the impacts
of meta-standards have been conducted in various
countries, often using a very similar methodology
(e.g. questionnaire). Certain surveys have also been
conducted from a transnational perspective (e.g.
Corbett and Kirsch 2001). Various studies have ana-
lysed the motivations behind adopting meta-standards
(e.g. Bansal and Roth 2000; Martínez-Costa et al.
2008; Sampaio et al. 2009; Yin and Schmeidler
2009). The effect on the performance of organiza-
tions has also been widely debated (e.g. Carlsson and
Carlsson 1996; Corbett et al. 2005; Dick et al. 2008;
Huarng et al. 1999; Martínez-Costa et al. 2008;
Terziovski et al. 2003). For example, the benefits of
ISO 9001 implementation have been widely studied.
Thus, the ISO 9001 adoption has been associated
with productivity and effectiveness (Douglas and
Glen 2000; Jang and Lin 2008), quality improve-
ment (Escanciano et al. 2001; Sun 2000), customer
satisfaction (González-Torre et al. 2001; Moatazed-
Keivani et al. 1999) and employee motivation
(Kunnanatt 2007; Santos and Escanciano 2002). The
same type of study has been undertaken with regard to
the benefits of ISO 14001 (Bansal and Hunter 2003;
Delmas 2001; González-Benito and González-Benito
2005; Yin and Schmeidler 2009).
2
This is a sub-approach with a clear link to that of self-
regulation, but which is put together in a different way as it
has far less theoretical basis.
© 2012 The Authors
Research Agenda on Management System Standards
In short, this first standpoint also includes – in
quantitative terms – an extremely far-ranging litera-
ture, and is also the approach that was developed
first, at a very early stage (in the early 1990s in
the case of ISO 9001). Generally speaking, technical
approaches tend to encourage organizations to adopt
meta-standards by shedding light on their positive
impacts, measured through quantitative studies
carried out in various regions and sectors of activity.
Nevertheless, these studies tend to overlook certain
pitfalls and pervasive effects that can result from the
adoption of meta-standards: paperwork, superficial
implementation and lack of internal motivation
(Boiral 2003, 2007; Christmann and Taylor 2006;
Jiang and Bansal 2003; Walgenbach 2001). More-
over, technical approaches tend to focus on the
standard implications for the organization and to
neglect more global issues that can explain their
international development and institutionalization
throughout various sectors of activity, such as the
use of meta-standards as self-regulation mecha-
nisms, their role as signalling models and their social
legitimacy in the eyes of certain stakeholders.
Non-technical approaches
These approaches are essentially focused on the
analysis of the development, rationality and social
legitimacy of meta-standards, from a more global
and theoretical perspective. Through the adoption of
meta-standards and their certification, legitimacy is
awarded to the organizations adopting them, and this
grants benefits beyond pure technical or efficiency
advantages (Beck and Walgenbach 2005). This stand-
point is most salient in New Institutionalism, although
it can be argued that it is also present in other
approaches and, on occasions, even in works which, in
terms of both the views they express and the journals
in which they are published, could be included among
technical approaches (e.g. Nair and Prajogo 2009).
This does not really come as a shock, above all if one
takes into account that, according to some authors,
third-party certification, like other forms of auditing
certification, is primarily aimed at creating trust and
social legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders (Boiral
and Gendron 2011; Power 2003).
Self-regulation refers to the adoption of voluntary
standards (e.g. environmental standards such as ISO
14001) beyond the requirements of government regu-
lation (Christmann and Taylor 2006; King and Lenox
2000; Prakash and Potoski 2007). As is underlined by
O’Rourke (2006) and Christmann and Taylor (2001),
© 2012 The Authors
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
51
the inability of some countries to establish a system
of public regulation in relation to particular fields of
activity such as the environment or employees’ rights,
has intensified companies’ interest in self-regulation,
a subject which is also of great relevance in the field
of management standards. Despite liberalization, the
global economy continues to be governed by rules,
but the rules are changing, and international stand-
ards point to one such set of changes (Nadvi and
Wältring 2004). If it is true, in fact, that in modern
nation-states the main burden of regulatory activity is
assumed by the public administration, which for this
purpose has at its disposal various powers to sanction
or to encourage, the new supranational organizations
which have arisen out of the decline of the nation-
state, such as the European Union, the United Nations
or the OECD, do not benefit from the same hierarchi-
cal authority and power to sanction, which has led
to the emergence of new regulatory institutions
that do not belong to the traditional sphere of public
regulation. For Mendel (2001), standardization thus
represents a form of coordination and hybrid govern-
ance that is on the increase. All in all, from this
perspective, standardization is thus perceived as a
new form of alternative to traditional public regula-
tion. The absence of a regulatory power of a global
public nature – the task of designing, implementing
and enforcing standards – tends to be assumed by
different regional or global institutions of a non-
governmental nature in areas that have traditionally
belonged to the area of regulation by the authorities
(Abbott and Snidal 2001; Brunsson and Jacobsson
2000; Neumayer and Perkins 2005). Among these
new regulatory institutions, special mention should
be made of the International Organization for
Standardization. This body, known by its acronym
ISO (International Standardization Organization),3
together with the IEC (International Electrotechnical
Commission) and the ITU (International Telecommu-
nication Union), form the main international organ-
izations for standardization. The three bodies have, in
conjunction with the WTO (World Trade Organiza-
tion), formed a strategic alliance with the common
aim of promoting the creation of a free and equitable
global trading system. This agreement, known as the
Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, provides
for the establishment of a code of conduct for the
3
The International Organization for Standardization was
reconstituted as the successor organization to the short-lived
International Standards Association, which had already been
established in the 1920s (Braun 2005).
52
preparation, adoption and application of standards
based on both the principles of non-discrimination
and harmonization and the stated objective of pre-
venting international standards becoming unneces-
sary technical barriers to free trade.
In short, what stands out in this standpoint is
the notion of meta-standards as moving towards a
global regulation tool. Within this standpoint, it would
also be interesting to explain, among other things, the
differences from the sub-standpoint associated with
works that analyse the link between meta-standards
and private international business regulation and
soft law (e.g. Abbott and Snidal 2006; Vogel 2008).
This sub-standpoint of soft laws differs from others in
that it focuses on an analysis of the legitimacy and
enforcement mechanism of initiatives such as ISO
14001, compared with hard law (Roht-Arriaza 2000;
Vogel 2008).
Another perspective featuring in management
studies, closely related to that referred to above, is
the analysis of meta-standards from the perspective
of decentralized institutions and signalling models,
based on Michael Spence’s theory of market signal-
ling (King and Toffel 2009; Terlaak and King 2006).
This perspective concentrates on analysing the role
of meta-standards and their certification and the
elimination of asymmetries in information. For this
perspective, meta-standards can be seen as signals of
supplier characteristics that lower search and moni-
toring costs in supply chains (Christmann and Taylor
2001; King et al. 2005). More specifically, Terlaak
and King (2006) argue that many studies carried
out from the perspective of the technical approach
that have tried to analyse companies’ motivation for
adopting meta-standards have failed to explain fully
the nature of certified management standards. These
authors affirm that, from a theoretical perspective,
the aforementioned studies do not explain why
organizations implement and certify such meta-
standards, given that, since the requirements of the
standards are public and consultancy firms are avail-
able to aid the adoption of practices, companies do
not need to certify the systems that they implement in
order to gain an operational benefit (Terlaak and
King 2006). In other words, they underline the idea
that an organization does not need a certificate in
order to make the standard work and that there must
be non-technical reasons that explain the existence of
meta-standards. Therefore, Terlaak and King (2006)
argue that certified management standards constitute
a form of private decentralized institution, because
participation is voluntary and because a wide variety
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
I. Heras-Saizarbitoria and O. Boiral
of stakeholders, rather than a single central authority,
provide rewards for participating or sanctions for not
participating. They emphasize the process of certifi-
cation itself, which is, in their opinion, the distin-
guishing element of these decentralized institutions:
‘certification as a critical determinant of the function
of management standards’ (Terlaak and King 2006,
p. 1092). The importance given to the notion of
information asymmetry could be identified as a
distinguishing feature of the standpoint, which
stresses that the raison d’être of meta-standards is to
reduce information asymmetries between potential
exchange partners.
Following an approach clearly related to that above,
the phenomenon of meta-standards has also been
studied (especially in relation to ISO 14001) from
the viewpoint of the theory of cartels and clubs which
can be applied to voluntary programmes in which
certifiable meta-standards may also be included
(particularly noteworthy for these purposes are the
contributions from Diaye et al. (2007), Kerret (2008)
and Potoski and Prakash (2004, 2005)). Basing their
observations on the theoretical model proposed by
Buchanan, Potoski and Prakash (2005) point out
that, for companies, the benefits of membership (the
so-called ‘club goods’) are the excludable branding
certification that allows members to publicize their
club membership and thus claim credit for their
pro-environment activities. The key conceptual dis-
tinction made by the authors is that
clubs’ excludable benefits are not the rewards
members receive from external audiences for taking
specific environmental action. Rather, excludable
benefits stem from membership in ISO 9001 or
ISO 14001, which provides a credible signal of
a company’s overall approach to environmental
governance. (Potoski and Prakash 2005)
The notion of information asymmetries is also
present in this standpoint, although one of the most
obvious distinguishing features that can be estab-
lished in this case is the importance given to the study
of costs and benefits associated with meta-standard
certification – the ‘additional costs’ and the ‘exclud-
able branding benefits’ (Prakash and Potoski 2006).
It is also highlighted that international trade buyers
face higher transaction costs in identifying quality
exporters because of spatial, cultural, and linguistic
distances and that, as a result, meta-standards such as
ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 were explicitly designed to
solve the information asymmetry problem in inter-
national trade (Potoski and Prakash 2009).
© 2012 The Authors
Research Agenda on Management System Standards
Meta-standards have also been analysed from the
perspective of New Institutionalism. This approach
to the study of the adoption of meta-standards
takes as its reference point institutional and neo-
institutional theories of the study of organizations
and suggests that firms obtain legitimacy by con-
forming to the dominant practices within their organ-
izational field. In their seminal work, DiMaggio and
Powell (1991) maintain that there are three types
of external pressure that lead organizations towards
isomorphism or homogeneity: coercive, mimetic
and normative.4 First, coercive isomorphism may
result from the pressure of external stakeholders to
adopt meta-standards. For example, pressure from
customers is one of the main drivers of ISO 9001
certification (Boiral 2003; Buttle 1997; Carlsson and
Carlsson 1996). Second, mimetic isomorphism tends
to occur when meta-standards are viewed by compa-
nies as exemplary forms of management practices.
The imitation of organizations adopting these exem-
plary management practices tends to propagate
certain standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001
across national borders (e.g. Beck and Walgenbach
2005; Boiral 2007; Boiral and Amara 2009; Guler
et al. 2002; Vasconcelos and Vasconcelos 2003).
Third, for several authors, normative isomorphism
occurs when an accreditation institution has the right
to evaluate and inspect other organizations, granting
the use of a seal or label certifying that the authorized
organization follows the processes prescribed by
the authorizer, and certificates such as ISO 9001 and
ISO 14001 fall into this category (Guler et al. 2002;
Mendel 2002; Vasconcelos and Vasconcelos 2003).
Generally speaking, organizations seek support
and legitimacy in their institutional fields by adopt-
ing structural models that are perceived to be the
best available. In that way, entities such as ISO are
key players in defining the isomorphic properties of
many institutional fields. One of the most prominent
aspects of this sub-approach is that it focuses on
analysing the cross-national dissemination of meta-
standards and the institutional pressures that explain
why companies certify. This standpoint emphasizes
the importance of coercive, normative and mimetic
forces and the mechanisms of international dissemi-
nation of the ISO 9001 standard (Casper and Hancke
1999; Guler et al. 2002; Mendel 2001). In short, the
4
Other followers of this line of theory maintain that these
processes can be divided into coercive, normative and cog-
nitive mechanisms leading to organizational isomorphism
(Braun 2005; Guler et al. 2002; Mendel 2002).
© 2012 The Authors
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
53
distinguishing feature of this sub-approach is that
New Institutionalism explains what meta-standards
are by focusing on the institutional pressures that
encourage their adoption. Nevertheless, according to
critical approaches based on New Institutionalism,
meta-standards can be superficially implemented
when organizations are mostly driven by the quest for
social legitimacy rather than the search for improve-
ments of internal practices (Boiral 2007; Christmann
and Taylor 2006; Walgenbach 2001).
A research agenda on meta-standards
As already pointed out by Uzumeri (1997) more than
a decade ago, meta-standards could lead to funda-
mental changes in management practice, since they
represent a new management technology that may
have a profound impact on the short-term evolution
of management practice. This author also declared
that scholars, practitioners and policy-makers should
begin the serious task of mapping and analysing their
broader implications (Uzumeri 1997).
It seems clear that the American scholar’s wish
has only partly come true. Although academic litera-
ture on the subject of meta-standards has grown in
recent years, it is surprising that its volume has not
increased even more, especially in view of the obser-
vation made by Corbett and Yeung (2008) to the
effect that, ‘Once one considers that literally millions
of organizations worldwide are directly impacted by
such meta-standards, it is surprising that not more
scholarly research exists on most of these standards’
(Corbett and Yeung 2008, p. 1). In our opinion,
however, the principal shortfall lies in the badly
structured and insufficiently incremental manner in
which academic research into the phenomenon has
developed.
Table 1 summarizes the principal research areas
that are currently being produced through the
medium of specialized academic literature, in an
attempt to carry out a mapping exercise that may be
of interest to researchers working in this research
field.
Regarding research area 1, the complex process
by which standards are created, along the lines of
the complete work undertaken by Haufler (1999),
carried out from a critical perspective, in relation to
ISO 14001, should be studied further. As Nadvi and
Wältring (2004) point out, global meta-standards for-
mulated by private and public/private initiatives such
as ISO imply new forms of global governance in the
54
Table 1. Academic study of meta-standards: an integrative review
Research areas Representative works
(theoretical approach/es)a
1. Creation of Haufler (1999) [O]
meta-standards Clapp (2001) [O]
and implications Summers (2003) [NI]
for global Nadvi and Wältring (2004) [O]
governance Giovannucci and Ponte (2005) [NI]
Nadvi (2008) [O]
Ruwet (2011) [O]
2. International Terlaak and King 2006 [SR]
diffusion process Corbett and Kirsch (2001) [TA]
of meta-standards Guler et al. (2002) [NI]
Delmas (2002) [NI]
Saraiva and Duarte (2003) [TA]
Poksinska et al. (2003) [C&C]
Franceschini et al. (2004) [TA]
Vastag (2004) [SR]
Neumayer and Perkins (2004 2005) [O]
Corbett (2006) [TA]
Marimón et al. (2006) [TA]
Alburquerque et al. (2007) [TA]
Potoski and Prakash (2009) [DIS]
Delmas and Montes (2008) [NI]
3. Motivations to Bansal and Roth (2000) [NI,TA]
adopt González-Benito and González-Benito
meta-standards (2005) [TA]
Beck and Walgenbach (2005) [NI]
King et al. (2005) [DIS]
Darnall and Edwards (2006) [NI]
Yin and Schmeidler (2009) [TA]
Martínez-Costa et al. (2008) [TA]
Sampaio et al. (2009) [TA]
Nair and Prajogo (2009) [NI,TA]
Prajogo (2011) [NI,TA]
4. Benefits of (A) Carlsson and Carlsson (1996) [TA]
adoption(A) and Buttle (1997) [TA]
impact on Brown and Van der Wiele (1995, 1996) [TA]
performance(B) Huarng et al. (1999) [TA]
Bansal and Bogner (2002) [TA]
Melnyk et al. (2002) [TA]
Terziovski et al. (2003) [NI,TA]
Casadesús and Karapetrovic (2005) [TA]
Prajogo (2011) [NI,TA]
Boiral and Amara (2009) [NI,TA]
Boiral (2011) [NI,TA]
Heras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2011a) [NI,TA]
(B)Rondinelli and Vastag (2000)[O]
Terziovski et al. (2003) [NI,TA]
King and Lenox (2001) [SR]
Russo and Harrison (2001) [NI]
Bansal and Bogner (2002) [O]
Terziovski et al. (2003) [NI,TA]
Corbett et al. (2005) [NI,TA]
Potoski and Prakash (2005) [C&C]
King et al. (2005) [DIS]
Dick et al. (2008) [TA]
Benner and Veloso (2008) [NI,TA]
Martínez-Costa et al. (2008) [TA]
Heras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2011b) [NI,TA]
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
I. Heras-Saizarbitoria and O. Boiral
Main research results
(representative works)
• Creation of meta-standards is a complex political process (Clapp
2001; Haufler 1999)
• Meta-standards imply new forms of global governance in the
world economy (Summers 2003)
• Meta-standards are frequently launched without the real
participation of the developing countries (Giovannucci and Ponte
2005; Nadvi and Wältring 2004)
• Positive correlation between certificates and macro-economic
variables (Neumayer and Perkins 2004; Potoski and Prakash
2004)
• ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 meta-standards had followed similar
diffusion patterns (Corbett 2006; Corbett and Kirsch 2001)
• ISO 14001 certification levels by country depend on ISO 9001
certification levels, export propensity, and environmental attitudes
(Corbett and Kirsch 2001)
• Bilateral trade and geographical proximity are drivers of ISO
9001, while cultural similarity drives for ISO 14001
(Alburquerque et al. 2007)
• The diffusion models for innovations fit well (Alburquerque et al.
2007; Franceschini et al. 2004; Marimón et al. 2006)
• Different typology of motivation: internal vs external
(González-Benito and González-Benito 2005); functionalist vs
institutional (Nair and Prajogo 2009).
• Isomorphic pressures are important drivers (Bansal and Roth
2000; Beck and Walgenbach 2005)
• Firms seek certification when their partners lack credible
information (King et al. 2005)
• Customer pressure and the external image are the main drivers
(Darnall and Edwards 2006)
• Main benefits of ISO 9001: improvement of operational
performance; greater customer satisfaction; improved
relationships within the organization; improvement in the internal
efficiency of the company; improved image for competitors and
stakeholders (Brown and Van der Wiele 1996; Casadesús and
Karapetrovic 2005; Terziovski et al. 2003)
• Main benefits of ISO 14001: reduction in the consumption of
resources and improved image for competitors and stakeholders
(Bansal and Bogner 2002; Melnyk et al. 2002)
• Positive impact of meta-standards in business performance
(Bansal and Bogner 2002; Corbett et al. 2005; Dick et al. 2008;
King et al. 2005; Martínez-Costa et al. 2008; Potoski and Prakash
2005; Russo and Harrison 2001; Heras-Saizarbitoria et al. 2011b)
• Significantly positive relationship between the drivers for
adopting the meta-standards and the benefits and/or the business
performance (Boiral 2007, 2011; Prajogo 2011; Terziovski et al.
2003; Heras-Saizarbitoria et al. 2011a)
• Paradoxical impacts of ISO 9001 certification and different
performance configurations based on criteria related to
effectiveness and internal problems Boiral and Amara (2009)
© 2012 The Authors
Research Agenda on Management System Standards 55

Table 1. Continued

Research areas Representative works Main research results

(theoretical approach/es)a (representative works)

5. Differences in Boiral (2003, 2007) [NI]
adoption levels Naveh and Marcus (2004) [O]
(internalization) Boiral and Roy (2007) [NI,TA]
Boiral (2007) [NI]
Nair and Prajogo (2009) [NI,TA]
Christmann and Taylor (2006) [SR]
Jang and Lin (2008) [NI,TA]
Yin and Schmeidler (2009) [NI,TA]
Boiral and Amara (2009) [NI,TA]
Heras-Saizarbitoria 2011 [NI, TA]
6. Integration of Karapetrovic and Willborn (1998) [TA]
standards Wilkinson and Dale (1999) [O]
Beckmerhagen et al. (2003) [TA]
Zutshi and Sohal (2005) [TA]
Zeng et al. (2006) [TA]
Salomone (2008) [TA]
Bernardo et al. (2009) [TA]
7. Consultancy(A) and (A) Sakofsky (1993) [TA]
auditing(B) for Vloeberghs and Bellens (1996) [O]
meta-standards Marimón et al. (2002) [TA]
(B) Chan et al. (1993) [TA]
Williamson et al. (1996) [TA]
Terziovski and Power (2007) [O]
Boiral and Gendron (2011) [NI,O]
• Different internalization levels of both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001
(Boiral and Roy 2007; Jang and Lin 2008; Naveh and Marcus
2004)
• Discrepancy between written document and daily practices and
ritualistic/Symbolic adoption (Boiral 2003 2007; Christmann and
Taylor 2006)
• Internalization rationale depending on institutional pressures and
internal involvement (Boiral 2007)
• Internal drivers positively correlated to the depth of adoption
(Boiral and Amara 2009; Jang and Lin 2008; Yin and Schmeidler
2009) and Internalization with operational performance (Nair and
Prajogo 2009)
• Heterogeneous internalization of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001
standards (Boiral 2007; Christmann and Taylor 2006;
Heras-Saizarbitoria 2011; Yin and Schmeidler 2009)
• Academic controversy about integration models (Karapetrovic
and Willborn 1998; Wilkinson and Dale 1999)
• Integration is often confused with the mere fusion of both
systems’ documentation procedures (Bernardo et al. 2009)
• Different perspectives towards integrating ISO 9001 and ISO
14001 (Zeng et al. 2006; Zutshi and Sohal 2005)
• Gap between clients’ expectations and their perception of the
quality of the consulting service (Marimón et al. 2002)
• The role of the auditor is critical for the adoption of
meta-standards (Williamson et al. 1996)
• Quality auditors are frequently unfamiliar with the client’s
industry and process or products/services (Terziovski and Power
2007)
• Misconceptions of the certification and auditing practices in the
area of accountability for sustainable development (Boiral and
Gendron 2011)

a
TA, Technical Approaches; SR, self-regulation; DIS, decentralized institutions and signalling models; C&C, theory of cartels and clubs;
NI, New Institutionalism; O, Others (see the classification used in the paper).

world economy, subject to potential conflicts that may
arise as a consequence of the competing interests of
private businesses and civil society stakeholders, an
aspect which could constitute an extremely interest-
ing subject for study and which has been little
exploited to date in relation to meta-standards. Simi-
larly, the problem of developing countries’ limited
capacity to exert an influence on the process of crea-
tion of meta-standards is also a subject of great inter-
est on which outstanding work has already been
carried out (e.g. Clapp 2001; Giovannucci and Ponte
2005; Nadvi 2008; Nadvi and Wältring 2004;
Summers 2003), despite the fact that there is still
much evidence to gather. In this research area, there is
no clear dominating theoretical approach.
In the second research area, there are several
studies carried out from the perspective of operations
management (Casadesús et al. 2008; Corbett 2006;
Franceschini et al. 2004; Marimón et al. 2006;
Poksinska et al. 2003; Saraiva and Duarte 2003)
which have tried to model the diffusion of meta-
standards and have confirmed the existence of
similar diffusion patterns for different types of meta-
standard (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 14001). In contrast,
other studies carried out from other non-technical
approaches have tried to analyse which factors
explain geographical differences in the diffusion of
meta-standards (Alburquerque et al. 2007; Corbett
2006; Corbett and Kirsch 2001; Delmas 2002; Grol-
leau et al. 2008; Guler et al. 2002; Neumayer and
Perkins 2005; Potoski and Prakash 2004; Terlaak and
King 2006; Vastag 2004). These studies stress that
a positive correlation exists between the number of
certificates and macro-economic variables such as

© 2012 The Authors

International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
56
the volume of direct overseas investment and the
tendency to export to the EU. Alburquerque et al.
(2007) conclude that ISO 9001 is driven primarily by
geography and bilateral trade relations, whereas ISO
14001 is driven by geography and cultural similarity.
In short, although many interesting results have been
obtained, clear answers are still waiting to be found
to such elementary questions. In this research area,
the contributions made from a technical perspective
are the dominant ones, with a noteworthy influence
also from the approach of New Institutionalism.
The third research area is also very closely linked
to that of the previous section, i.e. with the study of
the pattern of diffusion of meta-standards. While the
majority of existing studies on this subject are of
an empirical character, with little development of
a theoretical framework, there are nonetheless a
certain number of noteworthy studies undertaken in
the context of a clear and consistent conceptual and
theoretical framework. In short, it can be said that
there are two main theoretical approaches to this
issue. From one perspective, based on the theoretical
model established by New Institutionalism, it is sug-
gested that meta-standards are adopted due to pres-
sures of an external nature (Braun 2005; Christmann
and Taylor 2001; Corbett and Kirsch 2001; Delmas
2002; Guler et al. 2002). This analytical perspective
is criticized by academics, who argue that organiza-
tions are dynamic and active and are able to respond
in different ways, according to their resources and
capacities (Balzarova and Castka 2008; Beck and
Walgenbach 2005; Christmann and Taylor 2003;
Darnall and Edwards 2006; King and Lenox 2001;
Nair and Prajogo 2009; Yin and Schmeidler 2009).
Other more pragmatic and technical contributions
have tried to establish a classification of the motivat-
ing forces that lead companies to implement and
certify meta-standards (e.g. Bansal and Roth 2000;
González-Benito and González-Benito 2005). In this
type of empirical literature, there is no clear consen-
sus among specialists as to the main driving forces
behind meta-standards (on this issue, Martínez-
Costa et al. 2008; Prajogo 2011; Sampaio et al. 2009
are to be recommended for the extensive review that
is included of the literature on this subject).
In research area 4, the most quoted empirical
studies carried out from the technical perspective
have corroborated the positive effects or benefits of
both ISO 9001 (e.g. Arauz and Suzuki 2004; Briscoe
et al. 2005; Brown and Van der Wiele 1995, 1996;
Buttle 1997; Carlsson and Carlsson 1996; Casadesús
and Karapetrovic 2005; Huarng et al. 1999; Jones
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
I. Heras-Saizarbitoria and O. Boiral
et al. 1997; Tsiotras and Gotzamani 1996) and ISO
14001 (e.g. Bansal and Bogner 2002; Corbett and
Russo 2001; Florida and Davidson 2001; King and
Lenox 2001; Melnyk et al. 2002; Montabon et al.
2000; Rondinelli and Vastag 2000; Russo and Harri-
son 2001;). Regarding the impact on performance,
several studies on ISO 9001 (e.g. Benner and Veloso
2008; Corbett et al. 2005; Dick et al. 2008; Häversjö
2000; Martínez-Costa et al. 2008; Wayhan and
Balderson 2007) and ISO 14001 (e.g. Andrews
et al. 2003; Jiang and Bansal 2003; King et al. 2005;
Melnyk et al. 2003; Potoski and Prakash 2005;
Russo 2002) have used objective or factual measures
(i.e. accounting data, data on emissions), while the
majority of studies have used perceptual measures
obtained by surveys (i.e. based on questionnaires) to
analyse the impact of meta-standards on perform-
ance.5 Overall the results are mixed, but in a majority
of studies a significant positive relationship is
found between the adoption of meta-standards and a
company’s performance. In this research area, the
contributions made from a technical perspective are
also the dominant ones.
Regarding research area 5, although the majority
of studies into the adoption of meta-standards assume
homogeneous adoption – they concentrate on the
question of whether or not a company has third-party
certification as the sole criterion to demonstrate that
implementation has been completed – more and more
studies are now beginning to emphasize the hetero-
geneity of their adoption both in the case of ISO 9001
(Boiral 2003; Vasconcelos and Vasconcelos 2003;
Arauz and Suzuki 2004; Naveh and Marcus 2004;
Biazzo 2005; Beck and Walgenbach, 2005; Briscoe
et al. 2005; Christmann and Taylor 2006; Boiral and
Roy 2007; Jang and Lin 2008; Nair and Prajogo 2009;
Heras-Saizarbitoria 2011) and for ISO 14001 (Boiral
2001; Boiral, 2007; Yin and Schmeidler 2009; Heras-
Saizarbitoria et al. 2011a). In the case of this research
area, it is clear that the theoretical approach of New
Institutionalism is the prevalent one.
The sixth research area is a more pragmatic/
operational one. The success of the diffusion of
management standards in various different fields of
company management has led organizations to con-
sider their implementation in a single integrated
5
For a review of this type of study, Benner and Veloso
(2008), Martínez-Costa et al. (2009), Molina-Azorín et al.
(2009) and Sampaio et al. (2009) are interesting in the case
of ISO 9001, and Molina-Azorín et al. (2009) and Heras-
Saizarbitoria et al. (2011b) in the case of ISO 14001.
© 2012 The Authors
Research Agenda on Management System Standards
management system (Beckmerhagen et al. 2003;
Karapetrovic 2003; Karapetrovic and Willborn 1998;
Wilkinson and Dale 2001). At the same time, the
first studies analysing these aspects have begun to be
published in the academic world (Bernardo et al.
2009; Fresner and Engelhardt 2004; Salomone 2008;
Zeng et al. 2006; Zutshi and Sohal 2005). Given
the technical specialist nature of the theme, in this
research area it is also clear that the technical per-
spective is the dominant theoretical approach.
Finally, research area 7 deals with specialist con-
sultancy and the third-party auditing and registration
industry related to meta-standards. Various studies of
the field have confirmed the importance of external
consultancy services in the process of adoption of
meta-standards (e.g. Marimón et al. 2002; Sakofsky
1993; Vloeberghs and Bellens 1996). Similarly,
although it is stressed that the role of the auditor is
critical for the adoption of meta-standards (Sakofsky
1993; Terziovski and Power 2007; Williamson et al.
1996) and requires careful interpretation and train-
ing, several studies point out that quality auditors
are frequently unfamiliar with the client’s industry,
quality system and process or products/services, and
that this results in a poor-quality audit (Chan et al.
1993; Hutchins 1993; Williamson et al. 1996). In a
recent paper, Boiral and Gendron (2011) point out
that, although audit failure crises have not been as
prominent in the context of the audits of meta-
standards as they have been in the context of finan-
cial audits, ‘There is a significant gap between the
imagery of rationality and infallibility surrounding
ISO audits and what these audits can actually deliver’
(Boiral and Gendron 2011, p. 14). However, it should
be taken into account that the conclusions drawn
by the authors are not based on sufficient empirical
evidence, as they themselves acknowledge, which
is why empirical work will need to be carried out on
this interesting and controversial research area. In
this area, special mention should also be made of the
contributions made from a technical theoretical per-
spective, although attention should also be drawn to
the fact that interesting contributions are starting to
be published from the New Institutionalism perspec-
tive (e.g. Boiral and Gendron 2011), based on a more
developed and complex framework.
Discussion and conclusion
The objective of this paper was to analyse, through
an integrative study, the main findings of the litera-
© 2012 The Authors
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
57
ture on meta-standards and the avenues for future
research, based on the most significant knowledge
gap identified. The concept of management standard
or meta-standard is complex, multi-faceted and
has been extensively analysed in the literature
from various perspectives, including operations
management, strategic management, international
economics, economic geography and organizational
sociology. The level of analysis has ranged from a
pragmatic approach to the more theoretical level, but
without much inter-relation between the various dif-
ferent research areas.
It can be stated that the conclusions drawn from
the extensive body of academic literature available
on the subject have helped us to understand better
why and how these standards have been developed
and disseminated. In this sense, the non-technical
contributions have proved to be of special interest
owing to the solid nature of the basic theoretical
principles they put forward. Nevertheless, there still
remain many issues to be explored and a set of key
knowledge gaps on which research should focus in
the future, using both quantitative and qualitative
research methods (see Table 2).
Regarding the diffusion of meta-standards,
since the temporal aspects of the adoption of meta-
standards might also be important, there could be a
link between these studies and others of a theoretical
and empirical nature which have already become
established features in the field of management, and
deal in particular with the influence of fashionable
practices in business management (Abrahamson
1991, 1996). It may also interesting to analyse the
impact of the global financial and economic crisis
on the decertification process, which has recently
started to be analysed in the relevant literature
(Casadesús et al. 2008; Marimón et al. 2009) –
something that concerns, above all, the ISO itself
(ISO 2005).
However, although many interesting results have
been obtained, clear answers are still waiting to be
found to such elementary questions as the relation-
ship between the economic competitiveness of coun-
tries and the number of ISO certificates awarded.
Thus, very competitive economies such as Germany
and Finland have a relatively low level of certificates,
whereas less competitive countries (e.g. Italy, Spain,
Israel) have a very high level of certificates. In our
opinion, in order to make progress in this research
area, importance should be given to approaches
with a more pragmatic vision, which might be able
to throw light on this phenomenon, such as, for
 58
Table 2. Knowledge gaps on meta-standards: a research agenda
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Research areas Knowledge gaps Possible research methods

1. Creation of • Complex process of creation of many meta-standards (e.g. SA 8000, ISO 26000) • Semi-directive interviews among members of ISO technical committees in charge of the
meta-standards and • Study the complex networks of public and private stakeholders related to meta-standards and development of new meta-standards
implications for global their potential conflicts • Participant observation at meetings organized by ISO technical committees
governance • Mechanisms to overcome the developing countries’ inability to influence the process • Content analysis of documents from organizations for standardization
2. International diffusion • The global crisis and its impact on the decertification process • Cross-country comparative studies on the reasons explaining the decertification process
process of • Diffusion of meta-standards and management fads and fashions • Quantitative studies based on the international distribution and tendencies concerning the number
meta-standards • Why are some countries or regions more receptive to meta-standards than others? of certified organizations
• The importance of national goals and campaigns (public administration’s prescriptive role) • Qualitative studies of national organizations for standardization on challenges raised by the
• The adaptation of meta-standards to specific cultures and social contexts (resistance to models cultural adaptation of various meta-standards
developed in wealthy countries, issues related to literacy degree) • Case studies and comparative analysis of certified organizations from various countries
• The role of national organizations for standardization in the development of specific standards
3. Motivations to adopt • No clear consensus to identify the main drivers • Cross-country comparative studies on the motivations for the adoption of meta-standards
meta-standards • Most of the previous surveys are based on the opinion of managers (potential bias) • Perceptions of various stakeholders (employees, customers) of the main drivers for certification
• Regional differences in the motivation for adopting specific standards • Case studies on the reasons for certification renewal
• The motivations for choosing not to renew certification
4. Benefits of adoption • Confusion in the attribution of causation • Case studies on the costs and benefits of the certification process
and impact on • Employees perceptions of meta-standards impacts • Longitudinal studies on long-range impacts of certification
performance • Costs and benefits of the certification process • Quantitative studies on the impacts and success factors of integrating both ISO 9001 and ISO
• Role of auditors and consultants in improving the effectiveness of meta-standards 14001 standards
• The impact of global crisis • Quantitative studies on the impact of global crisis on ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 integration
• Impacts of new meta-standards such as ISO 26000 • Cross-country comparative studies on the impacts of meta-standards
• Impacts of integrating multiple meta-standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification • Meta-analysis and systematic reviews on the effectiveness of certifiable standards
• Critical success factors in meta-standards implementation
5. Differences in adoption • Symbolic adoption of CSR meta-standards • Case studies on the different levels of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 adoption inside the same
levels (internalization) • Role of certification process in the internalization of meta-standards organization
• Different levels of internalization inside the same organization • Longitudinal case studies on the evolution of the meta-standards dominant adoption models
• Contingency factors explaining the meta-standards integration levels • Interviews performed outside the workplace in order to reduce bias related to organizational
• Different configurations of internalization rhetoric of success
• Changes over time in the dominant adoption models • Cross-country comparative studies on the differences in adoption levels

I. Heras-Saizarbitoria and O. Boiral

6. Integration of standards
7. Consultancy and
auditing for
meta-standards
© 2012 The Authors
• Difficulties companies face during the integration process
• Whether the implementation model pursued conditions the process
• Analyse the consistency of external consultancy and auditing services
• Is there a more helpful auditing style, or is there a race to the bottom?
• For ISO 14001, do the third-party audits lead to the outsourcing of public environmental
inspection?
• Meta-analysis and systematic reviews on the main pitfalls of meta-standards integration
• Case studies on the difficulties faced by certified organizations depending on the implementation
model
• Longitudinal studies on the evolution of standards integration and its main difficulties
• Participant observation of certification audits
• Interviews among certification auditors on the audits preparation, realization and following-up
• Qualitative studies on the certification ethical issues based on the view of various stakeholders
(auditors, consultants, certified organizations, certification bodies.)

• Ethical issues of certification process: conflicts of interests, lack of auditors independence
• Relationships and differences between meta-standard certification and financial audits
• Perception of the reliability and trustfulness of certification in the eyes of different stakeholders
• The impact of training, qualifications and professionalism of auditors and consultants on the
certification process
• Cross-country comparative studies on the main characteristics of auditors: training, experience,
qualifications
• Semi-directive interviews among various stakeholders (employees, managers, customers) on the
reliability and trustfulness of certification audits
• Focus groups with financial and ISO auditors to shed light on the similarities and differences
between financial and ISO audits (preparation, ethical issues, commercial aspects)
Research Agenda on Management System Standards
example, those approaches which gather specific
evidence linked to the various different public and
private programmes to promote meta-standards that
have been established in an international context.
As far as studies that attempt to analyse the
motivation behind adopting meta-standards are con-
cerned, the perceptions of not only general managers,
but also of internal stakeholders (such as middle
managers or workers themselves who do not perform
management tasks) and those outside the company
(customers, suppliers, consultants and auditors)
should be taken into account. In this way, a richer
and more complete view of a process as complex as
the one we are faced with could be obtained. In the
case of studies that attempt to analyse the impact on
performance based on perceptual or self-reporting
measurements, problems of bias should be taken
into account. Thus, Corbett et al. (2005), Heras et al.
(2002), Wayhan and Balderson (2007), Wayhan et al.
(2002) and Yin and Schmeidler (2009) have pointed
out possible bias related to performance variables
based on managers’ ratings or on data supplied by
the companies themselves, since the person provid-
ing the information has a personal interest in over-
valuing it. Thus, when it is possible, it seems better to
ensure the use of more objective data or indicators
from existing records (e.g. commercial databases
containing economic and financial information,
or publicly available databases with information
on environmental performance). Furthermore, as
stressed by Christmann and Taylor (2006), future
research on the drivers for the adoption of meta-
standards should go beyond treating customers as
a homogeneous group by including the types of
requirements and preferences that different custom-
ers impose on suppliers.
However, there is no doubt that one of the most
thought-provoking research areas – owing to its
diverse implications – is that related to the internali-
zation of meta-standards (research area 5). There is a
clear knowledge gap in this field, and empirical
studies (especially those based on quantitative
methodology) are necessary in order to analyse the
perceptions of the various stakeholders with regard
to the process of adoption and internalization of
meta-standards. Furthermore, as both Christmann
and Taylor (2006) and Nair and Prajogo (2009) have
pointed out, owing to the increasing importance of
context dependence, future research should explore
the sources of variation in the quality of implemen-
tation of meta-standards in cross-country studies
with different cultures and political environments. As
© 2012 The Authors
International Journal of Management Reviews © 2012 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
59
Christmann and Taylor (2006) underlined, research-
ers need to acknowledge the limitation of certifi-
cation as a measure, and need to evaluate how
variations in the quality of standard implementation
may affect their results.
Finally, for future work, research should also focus
on studying audits by third parties – one of the proc-
esses that characterize the phenomenon of meta-
standards and one which has not received much
attention from researchers in recent years. It would be
interesting to analyse the consistency of external
auditing services rigorously, limited as they are by the
fact that they are contracted and paid for by the
company that wishes to become certified. This issue
has already been analysed in other areas of business
as a result of the accounting scandals that occurred in
the US a few years ago and, more recently, with the
problems facing credit-rating institutions in the finan-
cial crisis that arose in 2008. Indeed, as has been
demonstrated by recent scandals in the accountancy
sector and the financial market, third-party audit
of meta-standards – an activity that shares certain
features with that of account auditing and credit-
rating – is no guarantee of honesty (Boiral and
Gendron 2011; King et al. 2005). This question might
be related to a possible erosion of the prestige and
credibility of management standards, a danger which
has been pointed out ever since the phenomenon
began (Askey and Dale 1994). Thus, with a view to the
future it would also be interesting to analyse whether,
as a result of the rapid expansion in the diffusion of
meta-standards, the quality of audits has improved,
with better-trained and better-qualified auditors being
able to provide a more helpful auditing style, as some
authors maintain (e.g. Terziovski and Power 2007),
or whether it is rather the case that a rapid decline in
quality has taken place. As pointed out by Brumm
(1997), the existence of many entities capable of
performing the required audits and issuing the rel-
evant certificates was pointed out as a weakness that
favoured instrumental implementation practices, con-
tributing to the erosion of the prestige and credibility
of meta-standards, as recently stressed by several
authors (e.g. Boiral and Gendron 2011; Christmann
and Taylor 2006; Yeung and Mok 2005).
In short, further critical and rigorous empirical
studies are necessary in order to analyse the real
perceptions of the various stakeholders (consumers,
managers, suppliers, intermediary clients, workers
and public administration) regarding the adoption of
meta-standards and their effects. However, in order
for the results of such research to constitute a clear
60
contribution to an improvement in knowledge about
this phenomenon, the multidisciplinary orientation
of these studies is an essential requirement.
Meta-standards regulate management practices
in a broad range of companies around the globe. The
study of the complex role of the adoption of these
meta-standards by researchers of very different back-
grounds and different cultural and political environ-
ments could provide valuable contributions to a
better understanding of their real role, for both aca-
demic and practitioner purposes.
Lastly and as far as the limitations of the review
of literature conducted are concerned, we wonder
whether the concept of meta-standard has sufficient
maturity or, in other words, has a sufficiently solid
conceptual foundation, given the continued fragmen-
tation of the management field (Hodgkinson 2001).
Nevertheless, as we have attempted to argue in this
paper, we understand that, despite its complexity
and clearly multi-faceted nature, the concept of
meta-standard meets these requirements and is a
sufficiently mature, clear and well-defined manage-
ment concept. Furthermore, we must also consider
whether the possible subjective bias in the work is a
limitation. Indeed, as is the case with all integrative
reviews about a multi-faceted and complex subject
matter such as the one studied here, in which reviews
are not of an obviously systematic nature, it is clear
that other ways of mapping the academic knowledge
in the field might well exist. For example, other
authors might define approaches that have tended
to study meta-standards in the academic literature
differently. Despite the limitations referred to, we
understand that reviews such as the one contained in
this work are necessary to the field, to give, among
other reasons, other researchers who are interested in
reviewing this complex line of work cause to make
further contributions that may start to clarify and
provide evidence of the maturity of this field.
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