ISO 9001 Certification Status and Organizational Quality Maturity
Owino A. Okwiri, Isaac M. Mbeche

Abstract
ISO 9001 quality management system standard, a member of ISO 9000 family of standards that comprise two complementary pair of standards, ISO 9001 requirements and ISO 9004 guidelines standards, has been used globally as a framework for adoption of quality management approach. With focus on third party certification, performance of certified organizations, relative to the non-certified organizations, has been used to make judgment on the approach itself. To test the validity of this thinking, the authors carried out an in-depth case study in two ISO 9001 certified organizations in the East African nation of Kenya. The findings, based on the data from multiple informants from the two organizations, suggest that an organization can be successful in pre-certification audit and be certified even when it has not made any significant steps towards managing in the quality management way. The findings lead to a conclusion that certification does not imply quality management approach to management.

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