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Master‟s Thesis

National Culture and ISO 9001 systems: An exploratory case study by

W.L. van de Bunte

University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business Master of Science Business Administration Specialization: Organizational and Management Control

June, 2013 Het Groene Portaal 8

8071 TP Nunspeet Leon.vandebunte@gmail.com

+31621542394 S1784676

Supervisor: dr. C.P.A. Heijes Co-assessor: dr. J.S. Gusc

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Preface

This thesis marks the end of an important chapter in my life. This is the end product of five years of studying at the University of Groningen, which I feel gave me a solid basis for my future career. I have gained knowledge in several fields of business and looking back it was a period I could enjoy and which I will remember the years to come.

I have been working on this document for the last five months. The last three months I was doing an internship in Sydney, Australia, which made writing it this much more interesting. I would recommend everyone doing this. It has brought along several unique experiences, which were not always positive, but I feel they nonetheless made me grow as a person.

I would like to thank my supervisor, dr. Coen Heijes, who was immediately very cooperative when I first proposed writing my thesis together with doing an internship. The comments he gave in the process of working on this thesis were also very helpful and insightful and have greatly helped me to finish my thesis.

Gratitude also goes out to my supervisor at my internship company. He of course gave me the chance of doing the internship in the first place, but also was very cooperative during the internship. The tips he gave and the experiences I received in working at the company have proven to be instructive

I also want to thank Linda, my parents and my sisters for their amazing support and

motivation. They have been a great source of inspiration during the whole process. Finally I‟d like to thank everyone else who was helpful to me: dr. Joanna Gusc, Leon Charmant, and my friends, family and all other acquaintances that have helped me.

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National Culture and ISO 9001 systems: An exploratory case study

Abstract

This study is undertaken to try and determine if there is a relationship between motivation for and design of an ISO 9001 system and national culture variables. This is done via an

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1 1. Introduction

National culture is becoming increasingly important as a variable of research in the business and management field. It can be defined as a filter for perceiving the environment (Birnberg & Snodgrass, 1988). Thus it can be viewed as one of the forces guiding human decision making.

Although at first research into the relationship between national culture and management accounting and control has been lacking, more recently research into this topic has been growing. In 2003 Chenhall remarked that until then research regarding management control systems and national culture has been limited and was in an exploratory phase. From the references in his paper it can be seen that research into this phenomenon has been growing since the 1990‟s.

This research has mainly used the dimensions of culture as are developed by Hofstede (1983), though be it that most research does not include all dimensions, but focuses only on a subset of them (Chenhall, 2003). The research has focused on different directions, such as what influence the interplay of MCS and national culture has (Chow et al. 1991) and the effect of national culture on management control system design (van der Stede, 2003). But a lot of research also focused on just parts of a control system, such as planning or budgets in relation to culture (Birnbaum & Wong, 1985; Frucot & Shearon, 1991; Harrison, 1992; Ueno & Wu, 1993). However, a topic in this research that surprisingly has received almost no attention until now is the relationship with quality management systems, specifically ISO 9001 systems, and national culture. The ISO 9001 system is a set of guidelines developed by the International Organization of Standardization to offer organizations a uniform way of

implementing a QMS. An ISO 9001 system is one of the more simple approaches to a quality management system and can serve as a basis for implementing a more encompassing system such as Total Quality Management.

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this area focuses on success factors, although the boundary with the pre-implementation phase is somewhat ambiguous regarding this.

As stated by ISO itself, the design and implementation of a quality management system is under influence of several factors, one of which is the environment of the organization (ISO website). Despite this remark by the founding organization itself, little research has been done on the cultural influences on the implementation and design of quality management systems according to the ISO 9001 standard. The little research that has focused on external influences on the implementation of the ISO standards focuses mainly on the institutional influences on the diffusion of the ISO standard (Guler et al., 2002. Delmas & Montes-Sacho, 2011). The most research into cultural influences on ISO 9001 standards or vice versa regard the

relationship with organizational culture (Wilkinson & Dale, 2002; Lewis, Pun & Lalla, 2006; Wardhani et al., 2009; Gimenez-Espin, Jimenez-Jimenez & Martinez-Costa, 2013).

Remarkably, the concept of national culture is ignored in relation with the implementation and design of a quality management system based on the ISO 9001 standard.

This research wants to fill that gap by doing a case study in a multinational firm. As can be seen in the research into the relation between national culture and management control

systems, the dimensions of national culture can have a significant effect on the use and design of control systems (Chenhall, 2003). It is likely that this relation can also be found between national culture and quality management systems. Due to the time constraints of this study it will not be possible to examine the influence of this possible relation on the performance of the firm. However, the influence on implementation and design can be examined. Hence the research question will be:

“Does national culture influence the implementation and design of the ISO 9001 standards?”

To visualize this relationship a model is depicted in figure 1

Figure 1

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Due to the current lack of research in the relation of national culture to quality management systems this research will be of an exploratory nature. Existing literature will be used to structure this paper and will be used in order to develop reliable measures.

As stated above the data will be gathered via a case study. This case study is done in a global firm with branches all over the world. Most of the data will be gathered from the Dutch and Australian location. In its Dutch site the ISO system has been implemented for an amount of years, while its Australian location has been certified, but lost its certification and wants to re-implement the system again. The author has the opportunity to aid in the re-implementation at this site and this will be an ideal opportunity to gather data about the perspectives of the relevant managers about the ISO 9001 standards.

The main differences between Dutch and Australian culture are in the dimensions of

masculinity/feminity and Confucian Dynamism. The exact differences as initially measured by Hofstede can be found in Appendix A. Bigger differences may however exist between the cultures of the specific firms, since the employees of this firm are only a small subset of the population. Measuring the dimensions of national culture as developed by Hofstede within these locations will thus be of added value and could make it possible to draw more accurate conclusions.

This paper will be structured as following. The next section is a literature review in which the different concepts will be explained and the possible relations between the concepts will be discussed. However, seeing that this is an exploratory research no hypotheses will be developed yet. Following this will be a section explaining the methods of research and the argumentation for using these methods. After this the gathered data will be discussed,

followed by a discussion in which the relation between the concepts as discovered in the data will be compared to relevant existing literature. The conclusion section will give an oversight of the findings of this paper.

2. Literature review

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by a discussion about the research into the post-implementation phase. This last phase will be discussed rather briefly, as it will not be relevant for the research done in this paper, but it will be interesting to discuss the possible role of national culture on the relation between quality management systems and firm performance at the end of this section and this relation is ultimately of the most importance to organizations.

2.1 Quality management system

Quality management is defined as an integrated approach to achieving and sustaining high quality output, focusing on the maintenance and continuous processes and defect prevention at all levels and in all functions of the organization, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations (Flynn et al. 1994).

A standard quality system model is dictated by the ISO 9001 guidelines and it is determined as a most important phenomenon in recent times in quality management development and globalization (Dick, 2000). It is also probably the most well-known standard. The ISO 9001 series of standards are procedural of nature. Rather than standardizing technical

specifications, the standards define a comprehensive set of quality management practices in a generic fashion. Their chief purpose is to provide external quality assurance to customers by demonstrating a supplier‟s compliance with a formalized quality management system (Neumayer & Perkins, 2005).

Another definition is that the ISO 9001 series certification is not a standardised package that can be applied in the same way in every organisation; the standards only detail the essential elements of a formal quality assurance system, without recommending ways of applying them (Tsiotras & Gotzamani, 1996).

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5 2.1.1 Pre-implementation

The most attention in research into the ISO standards is directed toward the motivation for implementation and toward the link between business performance and ISO certification. Due to the limited time frame this research is subject to, this latter topic cannot be included into the research. The motivation for implementation however is indeed interesting to look into. Motivation is defined by Kunda (1990) as „any wish, desire or preference that concerns the outcome of a given reasoning task‟

Prajogo (2010) did research into the different motives organizations can have for

implementing the ISO 9001 system. He divided them into two categories, namely internal and external. Internal motivation takes place when the rewards are inherent in the activity itself, while external motives are driven by expectations of customers or pressures from the external environment such as the government. In this light the results of a study by Brown and van der Wiele (1998) are interesting. In their study in Australia, they found that most small and

medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seemingly felt forced by their customers to go for ISO 9001 certification and did not move further down the quality path.

In contrast, internal motives manifest firm‟s commitment to build competitive resources in their operational system using ISO 9001 standard as the foundation, consistent with RBV theory (Prajogo, 2010). Potentially interesting could be to research whether these motives differ in the two branches and whether this could be explained with cultural causes. Kaziliunas (2010) concluded that internal motives will generate better outcomes from the implementation, so researching this will also have practical value. This will be of importance when a link between motivation and national culture can be established.

Another remarkable finding was done by Jang & Lin (2008). They found that internal or external motivation resulted in differences in the depth of implementation which in turn led to differences in performance outcomes. Their findings show that firms with internal motivation had a greater depth of implementation and because of that enjoyed greater benefits in

operational performance. This also adds to the practical value of researching the relationship with national culture.

Another avenue of research has focused on the diffusion of the ISO certification, mostly in combination with institutional factors (Albuquerque et al. 2007, Delmas et al. 2011)

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trade relationships. This result is further strengthened by the research done by Corbett (2006). Where the research of Albuquerque was done at country-level, the research by Corbett was done at the firm level and came to the same conclusion. Guler et al. (2002) looked at diffusion from an institutional point of view. They came to the conclusion that the diffusion was in part led by coercive and normative isomorphic pressures resulting from trade ties. They argue that their results show that organizational practices can diffuse across the world in contingent ways. Isomorphic pressures will lead to external motivation for firms and are thus important to consider.

2.1.2 Implementation

The research interest in the implementation phase has mainly been in the factors contributing to successful implementation. As such the research focused more on the process itself and not so much on the design of the system, while this might be an area in which interesting

differences might arise as well. To quote the International Organization for Standardization again, the implementation as well as the design of the system can vary due to various factors, amongst which is the environment.

Al Rahawi & Bashir (2011) did extensive research into the implementation of the ISO 9001 standard following a division much like the one used as in this paper, though they do not explicitly appoint this. Regarding the implementation phase they developed hypotheses for several factors which could be important for successful implementation. The results of their study suggest that top management support is the most important factor for this, a statement which is reinforced by Kaziliunas (2010) in his paper. Other important factors that they listed are education of employees, the involvement of these employees and the working

environment.

Briscoe et al. (2005) argue that giving sufficient time for the implementation of the standard is also of essence. They say that rushing into the implementation will generate less than the desired results.

2.1.3 Post-implementation

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performance still is interesting and gives an indication of the practical consequences of a good implementation of an ISO 9001 system. Therefore this section will shortly discuss the current research findings in this area. The main conclusion to be drawn from extant literature in this area is that ISO certification has a positive impact on different aspects of firm performance. Mokhtar & Muda (2012) show that firms which have obtained ISO 9001 certification

outperform firms on most financial measures. They do warn however that their results should be interpreted with caution, seeing that this improved financial performance could be due to different causalities as well. This point was also raised by Starke et al. (2012) in relation to previous studies about performance and the ISO 9001 certification. They also pointed to this fact as the reason for the divergent and even contradictory results regarding research on this topic. In order to counteract this causality problem they performed a longitudinal study of twelve years, using performance measures that were less likely to be confounded by extraneous factors. The result of this study was again that ISO 9001 certification seems to have a positive impact on firm performance.

Wu & Chen (2011) took a more comprehensive measure of performance based on the balanced scorecard in order to examine the effect of ISO 9001 certification on firm performance. They measured performance using the four parts of the balanced scorecard, namely, the financial perspective, the customer perspective, the internal perspective and the learning and growth perspective. All of these perspectives consist of different measures. The hypotheses about all the perspectives were accepted and these results thus show that not only financial performance is positively affected by ISO certification.

2.2 National culture

In management research the initial dominant viewpoint was that there was a universal system of management control that could be applied to every organization. However since the 1980‟s the contingency strand of research has risen (Chenhall, 2003). This set of research has studied the influence of several external factors on the fit of a system for an organization. One of the factors that have received an increasing degree of attention is national culture.

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The dominant model used for operationalizing national culture is the one developed by

Hofstede (1980). This model uses a set of bipolar cultural dimensions to differentiate between cultures. Although there has been a growing critique on this model, it will be used in this study as well, because its widespread use will make it easier to compare results.

The following paragraphs will be used to discuss the model. After this the most notable critiques and the reasons why this model is still used will be deliberated on. The last section will discuss the main differences between the Dutch and the Australian national culture. The original model consisted of four dimensions to describe national culture. These are collectivism versus individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity versus femininity. Later on a fifth dimension was added, namely long-term versus short-term orientation. More recently the model was updated with a sixth dimension, knowingly

indulgence versus restraint.

The first dimension, Power Distance refers to the acceptance societies‟ members have with regard to the unequal distribution of power in said society. Societies with a high power distance accept a hierarchical order without much justification needed. To make this

applicable to an organization, power distance can be measured by the degree of centralization of authority and the degree of autocratic leadership in an organization (Hofstede, 1983). Individualism versus collectivism indicates the degree of integration in a culture. An individualist society is loose-knit, and people mainly look after their own and immediate families self-interest. In collectivist societies everybody is expected to look after their own and their group‟s self-interest. An individual can expect to be looked after by his/her in-group in return for the loyalty. An in-in-group could involve the extended family, a tribe or a village. In a work setting this in-group could encompass colleagues (Hofstede, 1983). The third dimension is masculinity versus femininity. In a masculine culture values like competitiveness, ambition and materialism are promoted. In a feminine culture the more preferred values are related to importance of relationships, quality of life and modesty (Hofstede, 1983).

Uncertainty avoidance regards the degree to which people in a society feel uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. In cultures with weak uncertainty avoidance people feel relatively secure. Cultures with high uncertainty avoidance have a higher need for rules and structure to feel secure (Hofstede 1983).

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side. These values are closely related to the teachings of Confucius, which is why the dimension is also known as Confucian Dynamism (Hofstede, 1994).

Since 2010 a sixth dimension is added to the framework. This dimension is called Indulgence versus Restraint. Indulgence stands for a society that allows relatively free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun. Restraint stands for a society that suppresses gratification of needs and regulates it by means of strict social norms (Hofstede centre). However no results for this dimension are yet published. This is why this dimension will be excluded from this research, since it has no comparison values.

Regarding the scores for the Australian and Dutch cultures, they are relatively comparable. Especially power distance and uncertainty avoidance almost have the same score. Long term orientation and individualism show differences with the Australian culture being more individual and more short-term oriented as compared to the Dutch culture, but these

differences are not very significant. On the masculinity dimension a big difference does show. This result suggests that Australian culture is much more masculine and thus more

competitive (Hofstede Centre).

The last part of this section will discuss the critiques on the Hofstede model. Baskerville (2003) and McSweeney (2002; 2009) offer a good overview of these critiques. The main critique is that the scores are derived from results obtained in one company. This subjects the results to the possible influences of the organizational culture, and that could have led to a distortion in the scores. This critique makes it of extra added value to measure the dimensions in the firms of this case. Therefore it is useful to compare the results of the original study by Hofstede and the results of this study. Other important critiques offered are that Hofstede only used a relatively small sample in order to generate his results for an entire country and that a culture is not bound by borders. In McSweeney‟s (2009) words culture is non-coherent, meaning that it is inconsistent and tolerant of ambiguity. Another false assumption that Hofstede makes according to McSweeney (2009) is that culture is stable. He argues that culture has temporal variation. As such it is difficult to label a certain country with a certain culture. These are critiques which unfortunately cannot be circumvented in this paper. The use of the model of Hofstede is preferred because of its extensive use in management

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10 2.3 Relationships between ISO and national culture

This section will discuss possible relationships between the different aspects in ISO

implementation and national culture. However no hypotheses are generated, this discussion merely serves the purpose of establishing a certain framework of what outcomes could be expected following the results of the research into the separate concepts.

The dimension of masculinity in particular might be of importance in the motivation for implementation, it is this dimension in which the biggest difference between the cultures can be seen. A more masculine culture will in general place a bigger value on competition. This value might determine the motives for implementation. It might be more likely in a masculine culture that firms will adopt the standard because of the external motive of trumping your competitors or following the industry trend and not falling behind on your competitors. Seeing that Briscoe et al. (2005) list time as an important factor in the successful

implementation of the ISO standard, the fifth dimension of the Hofstede model might be relevant as well. It might be more likely for the implementation of the ISO standard to fail in a short term oriented culture because such a culture might be more prone to try and rush the implementation in order to garner quick results.

Organizational culture is also a topic of discussion with regard to quality management systems. An organizational culture that values quality, „a quality culture‟, is deemed a

prerequisite by some researchers (Irani, Beskese & Love, 2004). Several authors have argued that a relationship exists between the constructs of quality and organisational culture (Sinclair & Arthur, 1994, Klein et. al, 1995). The definition of Schein (1984) of organisational culture states that it is a pattern of assumptions of a given group that are experienced to work well and therefore taught to new members of the group. Implementing a quality management system involves changing assumptions people will hold about work (Ngowi, 2000). Like these, there are more examples of ways in which a total quality management system

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Nelson and Gopalan (2003) argued that organisational culture often replicates national culture due to an isomorphic effect. This argument is based on the schools of institution theory, population-ecology theory and contingency theory.

However, due to the limited time frame in which this paper has to be finished it is not feasible to take the influence of organizational culture into account in the data collection and analysis. Another interesting perspective that Webster and White (2009) offer is that national culture also plays a significant role in the reactions of customers in the evaluation of a business‟ actions. This is intriguing because as was mentioned in the literature review customer expectations are part of the external motives for managers to implement a quality management system.

3. Methodology

The research method to be used is case research. Yin (1989) states that case research is very suitable for the description and explanation of complex phenomena within its real-life context. Therefore, the author has chosen to use the case research method. Case research is a research method which starts from a complex real-life context and embarks on research in this

complex reality on the basis of concepts and relations of existing theoretical frameworks. Another reason why case study as a method is the most suitable one in this instance is the current state of research in this area. As mentioned several times in the introduction, the current research regarding national culture and ISO 9001 is practically non-existent. Case studies in particular are very suitable for research in the early stages of a topic (Myers, 2009). This is fitting for the exploratory nature of this research. This type of research is used when the subject or problem has not yet been defined (De Leeuw, 1996), which is the case here. The underlying assumption used will be interpretive.

The concepts of culture as well as the ISO 9001 system are both complex issues. Studying them using quantitative data is very difficult and might result in an inaccurate conclusion. Due to time constraints the culture concept does have to be studied using the dimensions of

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society in mind. In this paper I will try to take into account these suggestions as much as possible in order to reduce the weaknesses of the Hofstede model as far as much as possible. This will be done by trying not to see the dimensions in isolation, but to account for the interrelated effect that they could have. Next to that the scores for the relevant population are calculated again, thereby reducing the temporal variation that might have occurred since the measurement by Hofstede. Because this study measures the national culture of only a small subset of the national population internal variations will be less of an issue.

The sample used by Hofstede (1931) was relatively large. Since this study only aims to measure the national culture inside the two locations, only the population of the two locations is relevant to measure. This will result in relatively small samples as compared to Hofstede. The result of these smaller samples is that most likely the differences between the

dimensional scores will be bigger, since smaller samples are more likely to yield extreme results. (Cooper & Schindler, 2008)

Since the ISO 9001 standard is a set of guidelines, there is no theoretical framework to be used for this concept. As of yet no dominant frameworks discussing the design and implementation of the ISO 9001 system exist.

In the research described in this paper several methods of data collection are used. The dimension indices will be calculated using the VSM 08, which is made publicly available by Hofstede himself. The questionnaire is spread via the company e-mail. The survey consists of 31 items of which the last six items are demographic questions. The questionnaire is attached in appendix B. This is the most effective way to reach the bulk of the employees in a short amount of time. This method of collection can however go at the cost of the response rate (Manfreda et al., 2008). The effectiveness and increased simplicity of analysis are however advantages that offset this disadvantage. The questionnaire employs a Likert scale for the questions measuring the dimensions

The absolute sample size used is not large, however, because the measures are used to determine only the cultures within the two different branches of the company, the relative sample size is big enough to measure the dimensional scores of the population.

The second main data collection method used was interviews. Originally two to three interviews per site were scheduled to be held, however seeing that only one person on each site was knowledgeable enough on the ISO 9001 topics to be discussed only these relevant persons were interviewed To make up for this loss of data participant observation and document study were also employed as collection methods. Extensive use of existing

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the operations manager of the Australian branch and the quality manager of the Dutch branch. These managers are the ones responsible for the quality management system within the sites. The interviews were semi-structured to give some consistency, but also to give the

opportunity to go deeper into interesting issues. To preserve the quality of the data it is important to prevent interviewer bias as much as possible. To minimize this type of bias the data collection was structured as much as possible and the monitoring of data collection by means of audio recording (Nieto & Szklo, 2012). The interviews were also held privately in order to prevent biased answers (Salkind, 2010). To do this the following measures were employed. The main topics the interview focused on were the implementation motives, the design of the system and the subject of performance effects was also briefly touched. The motives section focused on whether motivation was internal or external. Design questions related to delegation, incentives, scope and communication. A few questions exploring the perspective of the manager on the external and internal culture were included as well. These questions refer to the internal culture and the industry culture, mainly how competitive these cultures are in the perspective of the manager. Emphasis was put on competitiveness since the two cultures show the biggest difference in this value according to the original results of Hofstede. Each manager was interviewed for approximately half an hour to an hour. The interview questions followed from the literature research as presented above.

Observations were made in the Dutch branch during the interview, which was held on location. The observations in the Australian branch were made during a period of

approximately one and a half month, in which interactions took place with several employees. The qualitative data that was collected using the interviews and observation was analysed by using coding. This method is a procedure for organizing the text of transcripts and discovering patterns within this organizational structure (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003). The data that was collected with the interviews was partly organized automatically via the different themes present in the questions. The data collected with the observations was separated by

organisation and then written down per week and then per person. Behavioural observations were also included in these notes. Subsequently themes were identified and determined whether it was applicable for the research.

3.1 Quality of the research methods

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quantitative research, and as such consist of different concepts, as presented by Cohen et al. (2011). Internal and external validity are however applicable to qualitative research according to these authors and will thus be discussed here.

Ensuring internal validity is also ensuring reliability, since a demonstration of internal validity amounts to a simultaneous demonstration of reliability (Guba and Lincoln, 1981). One

method of increasing this type of validity is using triangulation. Triangulation can be done in several ways, of which two are employed in this study, knowingly data triangulation and methodological triangulation (Hitchcock & Hughes, 1993). The data triangulation was done by collecting data from more than one person on more than one location, while the

methodological triangulation was achieved by employing more than one method of data collection.

External validity refers to the degree to which the results can be generalized to the wider population, cases, settings, times or situations, i.e. the generalizability of the findings (Cohen et al., 2011). With regards to this type of validity in qualitative research, Lincoln and Guba (1985) argue that it is the researchers‟ task to provide sufficiently rich data for the readers and users of the research to determine whether generalizability is possible. In this study that is done by including all the data in the appendices.

3.2 The company

The company this case research was done in is a global manufacturer of lenses, with 34.000 employees worldwide. It has two major segments of business, namely information technology and health care. The health care business includes the production of eyeglass lenses. The two branches studied in this paper focus on this activity. In this industry the company can be regarded as a big player, not only limiting itself to producing the product, but also selling the product to the end user via their own stores, however these are at the moment only located in Japan. With their products in eyeglass lenses the company traditionally aims at the top segment and thus offers high-quality products. More recently they started addressing the middle and lower segment through another brand name and a separate joint venture respectively.

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The Dutch location already has an ISO 9001 system in place for a couple of years, while the Australian site used to have the certification but lost it in 2009, after the new edition of ISO 9001 was introduced, which came with additional requirements. Currently they are in progress of implementing the system again in order to get the certification, which is planned to be finished around September.

4. Results

This section will discuss the results from the survey and the interviews. The data obtained via observation and document study will be discussed in conjunction with the interview data. To keep this discussion organized this is done in several sub-sections. First the results of the surveys will be presented and compared to the original results as given by Hofstede.

Following this is a discussion of the interview results regarding the QMS system. A separate section is created for the interview results addressing the culture in which the companies operate and the culture of the branches itself. This is presented separately since these questions are used to try to fathom the managers‟ perspectives on the culture.

4.1 Culture Dimensions

To obtain the indices for national culture of the different company locations the VSM 08 was used. This tool is a further developed version of the tool used by Hofstede in 1980. The tool and its calculation are publicly available for research. This gave the author the opportunity to have a valid and reliable measure for national culture despite the lack of time.

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original one. This way of calculating implicitly assumes that for one culture the scores are the same as measured by Hofstede (1980). A full comparison is hence not possible.

The eventual calculation was done as follows, starting with Dutch culture. The mean for every question was calculated first. Following this, for each dimension the mean of two particular questions were to be multiplied by a given factor and then added up. To make the results interpretable a constant had to be added to each dimension. This constant equates the Dutch score of this study to that of the Hofstede study. Following this the Australian cultural scores were calculated, following the same steps, except for the last. This time the constant was not derived from the original scores, but for each dimension the same constant was used as for the Dutch culture.

This method of measurement means that the differences with the Hofstede scores will only show in the scores for the Australian culture. However the causes for these differences will not lie only in Australian culture, but might also be due to differences in the Dutch culture as compared to the original scores.

For the Australian site the survey was sent to all 158 employees, of which 21 responded. Two of the respondents did not complete the entire survey and were left out in the index

calculations. This yields an effective response rate of only 12.03%, which is low but in the expected response rate of an internet survey (Manfreda et al. 2008). The sample taken represents the entire population. Hence the eventual sample represents 12.03% of the total population, it can be seen as a narrow sample and as such used to generalize for the Australian culture within the firm (Hofstede, 1983). The Holland branch has fewer employees,

knowingly 75. Here too the survey was sent to the entire population. Total response was 23, of which three persons did not complete the survey and again were left out of further

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PDI IDV MAS UAI LTO

Australia Hofstede 36 90 61 51 31

The Netherlands 38 80 14 53 44

Australia case 62 54 40 47 35

Table 1

As was expected, taking into account the significant smaller size of the sample, the survey held yielded more extreme differences between the two cultures then was the case in the Hofstede research. Hofstede (2001) has argued that for his original data the 99% confidence interval is ±3 points. For the original results this would mean that there are significant differences between two dimensions. The table shows that for three dimensions the values measured differ the most from the original Hofstede results. The value for Power Distance as measured in the case company is bigger. Following the definition of this dimension this would mean that in the culture in the Australian site would have fewer problems with hierarchy and centralization than the Dutch location. One of the reasons behind this higher value can be found in the demographic variables, which show that a number of employees in the Australian branch are from Asian origin, which cultures originally have a higher Power Distance value. The opposite is true for the values of Individualism and Masculinity, for which the values are smaller. For Individualism this means that the difference between Dutch and Australian culture is bigger, while for Masculinity the difference has shrunk. Where in the Hofstede study Australian culture was measured to be more individualistic, the results of this case show a relatively more individualistic culture in the Dutch site. This means that in the Dutch branch the culture puts more emphasis on the individual and personal achievement. The difference in values of Masculinity has dropped, but still is large however, meaning that the Australian culture remains relatively the more competitive and assertive one. Again one of the probable causes for both these differences can be found in the Asian influences in the workforce of the Australian location. Asian cultures typically score lower on these dimensions than the

Australian culture.

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18 4.2 QMS Implementation and design

The interviews gave a few interesting results. Regarding the motives the Dutch manager stated:

“In the 90‟s the Japan Headquarters started an initiative that can be regarded as a sort of company predecessor of the ISO family, later on all laboratories were assigned to acquire certification for ISO 9001.”

The Dutch manager also added that on the long term the current systems could be further expanded to fit in a corporate social responsibility framework.

The emphasis is on the pressure put upon the site by headquarters to acquire certification while this is not the case for the Australian manager, who merely states that it was an internal decision, after having lost their previous certification. Further enquiries into the previous certification did result in the remark that the previous certification was in fact the result of company policy. This shows that for the Dutch location the decision was more or less external for that specific location, while for the Australian the current implementation is an internal decision.

The remark about corporate social responsibility however shows that the Dutch manager has adopted a positive perspective on quality and environment systems. Otherwise he would not consider expanding it further into corporate social responsibility.

The answers to the questions regarding the design of the system also show remarkable differences. In terms of delegation, the Australian manager states that:

“It is not very useful to have management „do it‟ or dedicate someone to accreditation, for the full effect it needs to be owned by the staff”

And with regards to why the previous (lost) accreditation did not sort effect on the performance of the firm:

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This centralisation can be seen in the organizational chart dating of this time, in which a separate quality manager was appointed. Further inquiries into the position this manager held was that it was mainly an administrative position and that he was the one making all the documentation and making sure they got through the certification process.

That these are not just statements can be seen in the practice of implementation for the new certification. The new system is built up from the beginning and in every step the supervisors of the several production departments are involved. Each document and procedure is created in concert with the supervisor. The perspective of the manager regarding this is that by maximising involvement in the design and implementation the supervisors will have the feeling that the system is their product and because of that will be more motivated to maintain the system when it is in place. Next to that, the involvement will lead to the procedures being as simple as possible, so that they will not be seen as redundant, and hence will less quick be seen as a burdensome activity.

This involvement so far seems to be very successful. Almost all the supervisors cooperate willingly and actively in designing the required procedures.

In contrast the Dutch manager states:

“Responsibility lies at the management and one level lower in the hierarchy we have appointed a QESH (Quality, Environment, Health and Safety) Manager for that.”

Obvious from these answers are the completely different perspectives the two managers have on the delegation of responsibilities.

This proclivity for centralisation in the Dutch firm is not only present in the quality

management system. A comparison of the organisational charts of the two companies shows that the structure of the Australian company is flatter. This means that the span of control is wider, and that the organisation is a better fit for decentralisation. With the Dutch branch having more layers of hierarchy centralisation is more likely.

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management communicates to department supervisors, whom pass on the information to the floor workers. Also interesting is that the emphasis put on what message the communication conveys is slightly different. Where the Australian manager explicitly states that the

communication will be about self-actualisation, and being the best they can be, the Dutch manager is stating that the emphasis will be put on the setting of goals, while improvement is seen as a continuous process.

Finally there were differences in the scope of and incentives tied to the system. The Dutch have a more comprehensive system in place, consisting of 11 documented procedures, where the Australians for now have six documented procedures, to which they do want to add in the near future. The scope with which the Dutch branch has implemented the quality system again testifies that they have adopted a positive perspective on the system and that motivation now is internal as well.

The difference in the scope of the system at the two locations is not completely comparable, since the systems are not in the same stage of maturity. The Australian branch is still

implementing the system while the Dutch system is already fully in place for some years. As the Australian manager states:

„The intent is for the system to cover the whole organisation‟

From this statement can be deducted that eventually the systems in the two separate locations will be of comparable scope, if the implementation in the Australian branch goes according to plan.

However still interesting is that while the Dutch system is of a bigger scope they chose not to tie incentives to quality objectives, whereas the Australian branch has done this in the form of bonuses to be received if quality objectives are attained.

What makes this difference extra interesting is that in communication the emphasis of the Dutch branch is actually on the goal setting, but that there clearly are no incentives put in place to achieve these goals, while the Australian branch does have incentives in place but does not emphasize goal setting as such.

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21 4.3 Organisational and Environment Culture

The interview addressed the competitiveness of the market in which the companies operate as well as the culture within the locations themselves.

Regarding the competitiveness in the market the Dutch manager stated that they had only one real competitor with whom they span approximately 60% of the entire market and that the rest of the competitors were just small players. The response given by the Australian manager differed from this. He states:

“We operate in an extremely competitive and changing market. The addressable market is shrinking and competition is becoming fiercer.”

In itself this is not very remarkable, since the two sites effectively operate in two separate markets. The Australian manager added however that the situation in Europe, the US and Japan are similar to this.

The company culture was described by the Australian manager as very internally focused and by the Dutch manager as mainly internally focused but also competitive, the focus is on producing a high quality product.

But where the Dutch manager sees his company‟s culture as stable and the organisation as a stable firm, the Australian manager reckons that they were traditionally very stable but people are becoming more and more used to change because of the turbulent period the firm has been through.

Since the author has been on location for a relatively short time it is difficult to report on the culture of the company from his own perspective very accurately. However the short

experience the author gained in the company gave him an impression. This is that indeed the Australian company is very internally focused. This was concluded because although the manager stated that the market in which they operated was very competitive, there was no mention of competition within the firm. The employees are only concerned with the quality of their own product and do not discuss about competitors. With regards to the quality

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22 5. Discussion

The goal of this study was to examine the possible interaction between national culture and the implementation and design of an ISO 9001 system. The national culture dimensions following the Hofstede (1980) model were measured within the two firms and interviews were held to examine the ISO 9001 systems. This resulted in some interesting findings. After the discussion of the results of the survey this discussion will be structured according to the phases of implementation. First a discussion regarding the pre-implementation phase will be presented. This will cover the motivation for implementation. Next the implementation phase will be discussed. This section will comprise of a discussion regarding the design of the system. Within the separate sections the influence of the cultural dimension will be argued. Breaking up the discussion this way will give the opportunity to present the dimensions separately but also allows for a discussion of the interrelation of the several dimensions. The discussion is closed with a general section in which closing arguments will be presented about cultural influence in general.

5.1 Pre-implementation

As argued in the literature review, the motivation for implementation can determine several factors related to the quality management system. The depth of implementation is influenced by the motivation, as well as the effect the quality system will have on the performance of the firm. The results of this study regarding the motivation for implementation are scarce and thus relations are difficult to infer. The Dutch manager stated that certification was obligated by Japanese headquarters, indicating an external motivation, while the Australian manager reckoned that it was an internal decision. Also the previous certification of the Australian location lapsed, which could indicate that they did not feel pressure from headquarters to have the ISO 9001 system in place.

Japanese culture is known to have a high score on the Power Distance dimension. According to Dimitratos et al. (2011) Power Distance is negatively related to hierarchical

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The Australian manager however perceived less pressure from the headquarters, seeing that he states the implementation to be an internal decision. A probable cause can be found in the masculinity dimension. A high score on this dimension means that values such as

competiveness and assertiveness are dominant.

The cause of losing the certification of the ISO 9001 system was that top management did not feel it was worth the investment, which means that losing the certification was a conscious decision, and hence could be a sign of assertiveness attached to the more masculine Australian culture, whereas the Dutch culture did continue to invest. Hence Masculinity could be of influence in the policy setting of headquarters.

Most likely there are also other causes. The performance of the firm at the moment is probably one of these causes. As the Australian manager states, the market in which the Australian branch is operating is shrinking and the Australian firm is undergoing fierce competition. In contrast the Dutch manager indicates that his company is one of only two big players in the market and that competition is not a big issue. In combination with, compared to Dutch culture, the relatively lower score on long-term orientation, such as with Australian culture, a firm in a competitive market will more quickly choose not to invest resources in a project of which the results are difficult to establish.

In contrast to this, managers of subsidiaries with a high power distance culture condone more interference by top management, which is argued by van der Stede (2003). This would mean in this study that it would have been more probable for the Australian location to conform to the quality requirements by headquarters. This could be an example of the relative importance of the dimensions in cultures, as discussed by Harrison & McKinnon (1999). They argued that the cultural dimensions have differential intensity in different cultures and that cultures

consist of core values and peripheral values, instead of every value having equal weighting of importance. This offers an explanation for why, despite the high score on Power Distance, the Australian branch did not express perceiving pressure anymore from headquarters to

implement a quality management system. Power distance might not have the same intensity as Masculinity, which increases assertiveness.

The higher score on the dimension of Masculinity could also play a role in the internal motivation of the Australian branch to implement a quality management system. They

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research done by Buttle (1997) shows that firms indeed could also implement the ISO 9001 system for marketing purposes

Also interesting to find is that although the Dutch branch apparently did perceive pressure from headquarters to implement a quality system, they have adopted the perspective of headquarters and are even considering expanding it into a corporate social responsibility framework. This too could be a sign of changing organizational culture.

What this discussion shows so far is that Power Distance and Masculinity could be important factors in the motivation for a quality system, especially in the case of a multinational. As van der Stede (2003) argues in his research about management control systems intra-corporate isomorphism tends to occur in multinationals. He also concluded that Power Distance plays a role in this isomorphism. That is what can be seen in the Dutch location as well. In the Australian branch however, the Power Distance influence is overridden. Masculinity might play a part in this as it increases assertiveness.

5.2 Implementation

The dimension of Power Distance measured in this study shows the biggest difference as compared to the original results of Hofstede. According to Hofstede (1980) the increase in score on this dimension for Australian culture will result in the organisation having a greater tendency to favour centralisation. For the ISO 9001 system this would mean that the

responsibilities will be appointed to the management, while this should not be the case for the Dutch firm, where the Power Distance is relatively small.

It is thus interesting to see that it is the Australian location which emphasises the need of the employees to be involved in the system, while the Dutch location has appointed a manager who is responsible for the system. So far this has been a good choice for the Dutch branch, since the manager responsible indicated that the system did have positive financial and non-financial consequences.

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Seeing that the motivation for implementing ISO 9001 was given by headquarters, it might be possible that the centralisation is a consequence of headquarter policy as well. From the interview with the Dutch manager the conclusion can be drawn that the ISO system evolved from a quality system that was developed by the headquarters in Japan. Japanese culture typically does have a large Power Distance and high Collectivism, supporting centralisation. Thus the centralisation might be a heritage from the system developed by the headquarters themselves and there has been no need to change it in the Dutch location.

In the Australian branch the choice for de-centralisation does not match the Power Distance score as well. One explaining factor could be that they have learned from the past. Their previous ISO 9001 system was maintained by one person, but that did not give the results that the firm wanted and was also at the root of losing their accreditation. A study to support this view is done by Skerlavaj, Su & Huang (2013). Their research shows a moderating effect of Power Distance on the positive relation between information interpretation and cognitive or behavioural changes. This effect results in organizational members in a high Power Distance organisation being more likely to modify their behaviours and perceptions when they perceive a greater level of importance in information interpretation. These authors also found that this positive effect of interpretation on change was negatively affected by the levels of dimensions of Individualism and Masculinity.

These dimensions are also precisely the ones in which this study shows lower levels as compared to the original Hofstede results, thus reducing this negative influence.

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Australian site had power based solely on position, such as coercive power, reward power or legitimate power and thus could not improve implementation of the quality system, since the learning element is made more difficult. The answer of the Australian manager shows that the function of quality manager used to be an administrative function and this hints towards the power base being based on position.

Another point of view is given by Lin (2009). He argues that a high score on uncertainty avoidance and low power distance will help to enhance process management. He states that especially in a society with high uncertainty avoidance continuous improvement, which is a part of the ISO 9001 standard, is seen as a value added activity. He also states that co-operation is an important part of a TQM effort since an effective organisation is a system of highly interdependent components. In a society with lower power distance this co-operation is achieved easier. This might also be a cause why the Dutch ISO 9001 implementation does work using centralization, while the Australian did not work using this mechanism.

The use of incentives different in the two branches as well. This can be contributed to cultural factors as well. Masculinity is the only dimension in which the original results of Hofstede gave a significant difference and although the results of this survey show a smaller gap, the difference is still large. Research done into the use of incentives in management control systems by Jansen, Merchant & van der Stede showed that a firm with the more feminine Dutch culture was less prone to the use of incentive based rewards systems as compared to a typical US firm. This result is confirmed here. The Australian firm, which has the more masculine culture, installs bonuses to be awarded when quality objectives are met, while the Dutch manager merely mentions that there are no incentives tied to the QMS, but only use incidental rewards following external occasions to motivate employees. Also regarding the use of incentives, power distance could play a role as well. Chow et al. (1996) argue that resentment to budgetary controls is likely to be lower in a high power distance culture. The policies of the two locations regarding incentives conform to this. The low power distance Dutch culture does not use incentives, while the high power distance Australian culture does.

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usual procedure for communication, passing the news down through the hierarchical levels. Culture could come into play here as well. The research done by Tan et al. (1998) shows that the dimensions of Power Distance and Individualism influence the so-called status effects of communication by higher-status individuals. Individuals from cultures with high collectivism and low individualism will perceive greater status influence than more individualistic and low power distance individuals. This can lead to cognitive inertia in the former case. Individuals here will refrain from criticizing the view of higher-individuals in fear of reprisals (Tan et al. 1998).

Seeing that the Australian branch wants the employees to own the quality management system, the choice of letting the direct supervisors brief employees on results and new

objectives is a good one. The status effects will be smaller this way, allowing a greater chance for input by the employees.

The Dutch site however does have the responsibilities centralised and chooses for top management to brief the entire company which is possible seeing the centralisation which makes contributions by employees less important. Status effects however will be smaller here anyway, since the culture here is more individualistic and has a lower power distance. This makes it less likely that employees will refrain from discussion because of the status effects.

5.3 Cultural influences

In the literature section organizational culture was presented as a possible instrument through which national culture exerts influence on the motives for and design of a quality

management system. This too however has not been determined yet. In the literature section it was argued that national culture has a big influence on organizational culture and that the latter is a subset of the former. Johns (2006) explicitly states that national culture constrains variation in organizational culture. However there is also evidence that shows considerable variation in organizational culture within countries (Krug & Hendriscke, 2008; Tsui, Wang & Xin, 2006). Gerhart (2008) in his study shows that the hypothesis that national culture

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This could be an explanation as to why the system is not designed according to what Hofstedes dimensional scores would predict. The organizational culture in the Australian branch might override the influence of power distance to make a system involving employee involvement possible. Other elements of the system are in line with what the dimensional scores would predict. This is according with what Dong & Glaister (2007) argue. They have stated companies should consider both the organizational as well as the national culture in management.

6. Conclusion

This research has tried to establish a basis for further research into the cultural effects on the ISO 9001 implementation. It has tried to do so by combining the Hofstede model for national culture with interview data regarding the motivation for and implementation of the system. The implementation of the system focused mainly on design issues. The design was broken up much like a management control system, in elements such as centralisation, communication and incentives. The first two are important parts in the design of the ISO 9001 system and the procedures for these elements are checked during the mandatory audits for certification. The element of incentives is researched because of the motivational effect and is relevant because the previous certification in the Australian branch lapsed.

The data shows contradictory results. Since the Power Distance is smaller, the Dutch branch should feel less pressured by headquarters to implement the system. The interview indicated otherwise however. This could be because of the Masculinity dimension, which offsets the Power Distance.

The design of the system with regarding to centralisation is also contradictory to what the Power Distance score would predict. Again there might be an interrelated effect of Power Distance and Masculinity. This would be in line with the results by Harrison and McKinnon (1999).

Other elements of design, communication and incentives, were in line with what the cultural dimension would predict and show a fit with the rest of the system as well.

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As can be seen from the discussion the ISO implementation is influenced by its entire environment.

The cultural factors that are of influence show that they change with time. This makes it more complex to draw conclusions. This also means that as culture changes it could be necessary to change the design of the system over time.

Next to the cultural factors, other external factors are of influence too. For instance the policies set by headquarters could be seen to be guiding in the Dutch firm. This was however not the case in the Australian branch. Whether this is due to cultural dispositions or other factors could be an interesting avenue of research.

The market in which the firm has to compete can be seen to play a role as well. But again this factor cannot be seen in isolation from the others, since this is perceived by the reference frame of the management which is influenced by several factors amongst which is culture These interrelations make this topic complex and interesting to research. Further findings regarding this are of academical and practical value as they can help organizations implement quality systems and further academics‟ understanding of the implementation of control systems in general.

The critique by Chenhall (2003) that cultural values can override each other and do not have equal weightings of importance can be hypothesized here as well. This can be seen in the case of the Australian firm, perhaps because of their high masculinity score, although having a high power distance score still let their certification lapse. This happened while the Dutch branch with a lower power distance score acknowledged that they initially implemented the quality system because of headquarters.

This research set out to fill the gap in research in the relation of national culture with an ISO 9001 system. Rather than having this gap filled it has found that the gap is much bigger and more complex than initially hypothesized. With regards to this a parallel with Alice and Wonderland is illustrative. Alice chased a rabbit into its hole, but once inside found that the hole was much bigger than expected. On her way in the hole she encounters many strange figures with which she has interactions and these make the adventure very complex and confusing. This is what has happened in this research. During the progress in data analysis more and more factors were discovered that play a role in the relationship and hence make it more and more complex.

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confirmed in this research. One cause is that culture has proven not to be stable. Further causes are that national culture has interrelations with for instance the employee basis and with headquarters policy.

The second element is the interrelation that was found among several factors. Among these are headquarters, the market in which the firm operates and organisation culture. Hence there is not only a relation between national culture and ISO 9001, but also between the

environment and national culture and between headquarters and national culture and

headquarters and ISO 9001. As of now these relations can be visualized as depicted in figure 2.

Figure 2

This study has got several limitations. To start with it suffers from the general limitations of a case study. These include limited internal and external validity. This has also been mentioned in the methodology. In this section the author has indicated how these limitations have been reduced as much as possible.

As to the more specific limitations, the study was performed in a limited time frame, which had various consequences. First of all the scope of this study was limited to only two

National Culture

Environment

Headquarters

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locations, which severely limits generalizability. It also resulted in a limitation for the amount of data that could be gathered and analysed, which makes it harder to draw inferences.

Furthermore, the criticized Hofstede model had to be used to measure national culture. Although it has been updated this model might not give the most accurate representation of culture. Alternatives are present in Schwartz‟s model and Globe, these are however more complicated. The sample size for measuring the culture within the firms was also small due to the time frame. The survey had to be spread via e-mail since this is the most efficient, but this did go at the cost of the sample size. Organizational culture could not be taken into account, while previous literature shows this to be an important factor in the implementation of quality management systems.

But the most limitation for this study is that it could only two interviews were held. This resulted in a limited dataset, a flaw that cannot be entirely absorbed by the more extensive use of literature and observation.

Further research should focus on quantitative and qualitative research on the implied relations mentioned above. As of now no causalities are established, in order to give sound practical implications this is necessary. The quantitative research should be focused on this, while the qualitative research could focus identifying other factors that are of influence and on further exploring the interrelations amongst the various factors. Research should also be done using more complex measures of national culture, as well as take into account variables of

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32 9. References

Adair, W.L., Okomura, T. & Brett, J.M. 2001. Negotiation behaviour when cultures collide: the United States and Japan. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86: 371 - 385

Albuquerque, P., Bronnenberg, B.J. & Corbett, C.J. 2007. A spatiotemporal analysis of the global diffusion of ISO 9001 and ISO 14000 certification. Management Science. 53(3): 451-468

Ali, A.Md. & Yusof, H. 2011. Quality in Qualitative Studies. Issues in Social and Environmental Accounting, 5(1/2): 25-64

Al-Rahawi, A.M.S. & Bashir, H.A. 2011. On the implementation of ISO 9001:2000: a comparative investigation. The TQM Journal, 23(6): 673-687

Auerbach, C.F. & Silverstein, L.B. 2003. Qualitative data: an introduction to coding and

analysis. New York University Press, New York.

Balzarova, M.A., Castka, P., Bamber, C.J. & Sharp, J.M. 2008. How organisational culture impacts on the implementation of ISO 14001: 1996 – a UK multicase review. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Vol 17(1): 89-103

Baskerville, R.F. 2003. Hofstede never studied culture. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 28: 1-14

Birnberg, J.G. & Snodgrass, C. 1988. Culture and Control: A Field study. Accounting, Organizations & Society, 13(5): 447-464

Birnbaum, P.H. & Wong, G.Y.Y. 1985. Organizational structure of multinational banks in Hong Kong from a culture-free perspective. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30: 262 - 277

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Brown, A., Van der Wiele, T. and Loughton, K. 1998, “Smaller enterprises‟ experiences with ISO 9001”, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 15(3): 273-85.

Chenhall, R.H. 2003. Management control systems design within its organizational context: findings from contingency-based research and directions for the future. Accounting,

Organizations & Society, 28: 127-168

Chow, C.W., Kato, Y. & Merchant, K.A. 1996. The use of organizational controls and their effects on data manipulation and management myopia: Japan vs. US comparison.

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 21(2/3): 175-92

Chow, C.W., Shields, M.D. & Chan, Y.K. 1991. The effects of management control and national culture on manufacturing performance: An experimental investigation. Accounting, Organizations & Society, 16(3): 209-226

Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. 2011. Research methods in education. Routledge, New York.

Cooper, D.R. & Schindler, P.M. 2008. Business Research Methods (10th Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill

Corbett, J. 2006. Global diffusion of ISO 9001 certification through supply chains. Journal of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 8(4): 330-350

Delmas, A.M., Montes-Sacho, I.M.J. 2011. An institutional perspective on the diffusion of International Management System Standards: The case of the environmental management standard ISO 14001. Business Ethics Quarterly. 21(1): 103-132

Dick, G.P.M. 2000. ISO 9001 benefits, reality or myth? The TQM Magazine, 12(9): 365-371

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