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Certified and non-certified organisations must make strategic decisions regarding ISO 9001 adoption, maintenance, renewal and abandonment. However, the ISO 9001 literature lacks a typology of the strategic options available to these organisations. The purpose of this conceptual study is to develop a framework of the alternative strategies for the stages of the ISO 9001 life cycle (implementation/certification, certification maintenance and recertification/decertification stages).

The research method is based on literature review, selection of relevant variables and synthesis of coherent alternative strategies.

Results include the main variables of relevance for the definition of the ISO 9001 strategies (e.g. life cycle stage, organisational motivations, barriers, benefits, internalisation degree and quality of the certification body), the main situations in which organisations can find themselves (in terms of ISO 9001 certification, maintenance and decertification), the strategic options for each situation (e.g.: certify, maintain certification, try harder, change certification body, intensify learning and experimentation with ISO 9001) and the implications and consequences of such options. Research results are integrated into a strategy framework, composed of three strategy matrices, one for each stage of the life cycle. The matrices present the strategic situations, available strategic alternatives and benefits of the strategies.

This study combines the results of previous research to develop an original strategy framework, which constitutes the main research contribution. As far as the author is aware, there is no such strategy framework in the literature. The framework has relevant implications for theory and practice and helps to identify future research directions.

The purpose is to analyse the influence of inertia and group conformity on loyalty in healthcare.

Structural equation model developed from the literature and tested with cross-sectional data from a patient online survey.

Inertia is a significant antecedent of loyalty and has a stronger effect in healthcare than in other service sectors. Group conformity has no significant effect in healthcare.

The strength of the impact of inertia [group conformity] on loyalty depends on the importance of the customer need that the service industry satisfies, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Where inertia (stability need) is equally or more [less] important than the customer need, the influence of inertia on loyalty should be positive and strong [weak or insignificant]. In services that satisfy needs more [equally or less] important than group conformity (belonging need), there may be an insignificant [significant] influence of group conformity on customer loyalty, even [especially] in credence services.

Healthcare providers can exploit the stronger effect of inertia in healthcare through development of inertia-based loyalty policies. Regulatory authorities should be vigilant to ensure that these policies are not detrimental to patients. ‘Inert’ patients must become responsible for assessing their loyalties. Authorities and reference groups must stimulate customer loyalty assessments, and assist by providing impartial information.

This is the first study to address the influence of inertia and group conformity on loyalty in the healthcare sector and, from the perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is the first to do so in any service sector.

The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: How do strategy implementation obstacles relate to each other and affect strategy implementation?

The research methodology is qualitative and based on an extensive review of the literature and on an in-depth case study analysis.

This paper draws two main conclusions. The first is that the many obstacles that impact the strategy implementation process can interact and be strongly interrelated in dynamic and complex manners. The second is that obstacles can lead to and reinforce other obstacles, eventually forming long chains of blockages.

Strategy implementation remains a difficult task with improbable success. This paper provides a contribution to an explanation on why so many strategy implementation efforts fail. It is one of the very few papers addressing the issue of the relationships between strategy implementation obstacles.

The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent the loss of the ISO 9001 certification affects the decertified firms’ financial performance.

Using standard event study methods, this paper matches a sample of 143 Portuguese companies that lost their ISO 9001 certification with similar non-event counterpart firms (according to return-on-assets (ROA) and size) and compares the performance of these two groups of firms using financial data collected from the AMADEUS database.

Results show no statistical significant differences in the financial performance (as measured by ROA, return-on-sales (ROS) and sales growth) between companies that lost their ISO 9001 certification and their matched firms. Although the literature suggests that certification improves firms’ performance and that the benefits of certification may last over long periods of time, this paper’s results suggest that, after decertification, companies do not exhibit over or underperformance in their operations vis-à-vis comparable firms that do not undergo the same event.

As far as the authors are aware, this is the first study assessing the impact of ISO 9001 certificate withdrawal on the decertified firms’ financial performance.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

ISO 9001 is a quality management system that can be of great benefit to firms, depending on why and how they adopt it.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Strategic implementation processes fail at an alarming rate. This brief looks at why obstacles can have such a devastating impact on strategies within organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists, and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

This study aims to analyze the configuration of the board of directors of the five largest banks operating in Brazil, which are members of a financial elite that directly influences the socioeconomic life in Latin America.

This assessment is inspired by Bourdieu's sociological approach and in the discussion on his work in organization studies and economic sociology. It addresses the organization as a field and investigates its associated field of power. The authors conducted qualitative research and relationally analyzed data related to the trajectory and the social properties of the councilors using the statistical technique called multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).

The results show that forms of social and cultural capital are particularly influential in the production of distinctions among banks' board members. Moreover, councils' priorities and configurations are diverse: some idealized and based on knowledge, others pragmatic and based on customs, others still anchored in a double logic of market satisfaction and family wealth preservation.

Understanding the objective power relations among these top agents may be crucial for effectively regulating certain aspects of their activities. Furthermore, understanding how different forms of capital affect the relative position of the board members may help us reduce representative bias in what seems today an inner circle.

This study is relevant because it makes an in-depth analysis of the composition of one of the most influential financial elites in Latin America, combining sociological theory and advanced statistical techniques for qualitative grouping (MCA).

Literature has long been discussing indigenous forms of informal practices whose cultural origins are concealed. We first seek to provide a contextualization of the importance of an informal practice that is salient within the Brazilian culture – the Brazilian jeitinho. We then provide a historical background of the jeitinho, as well as an attempt to come up with a definition of the construct, which is by no means a definitive one. We explore how the jeitinho plays a role in the Brazilian organizational scenario, which may be useful for international companies aiming to do business in the country. Finally, we present a set of recommendations as how to deal with jeitinho in organizational-related occasions, drawing on the Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's “cordial man” concept, which suggests that the roots of Brazilian culture lie in the patriarchal environment of the colonial period. We do not have in this chapter the intention of characterizing the multiplicity of Brazilian business practices, what would be an impossible task to accomplish in light of the enormous diversity of social contexts in Brazil. What we present in the chapter are some concepts and tools for working with and, fundamentally, understanding the organizational and social process the Brazilian context, which we hope may be useful for those interested in doing business in or with Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework to assist the selection of certification bodies in the implementation of quality management system (QMS) based on ISO 9001 taking into account a set of criteria organized in a multi-level hierarchical form. To deal with this complexity, the multi-criteria decision-making method (MCDM) analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used in this research.

The research was conducted in small and medium-sized companies certified to ISO 9001. The MCDM method AHP was used as a method for developing the model to support the selection of certification bodies.

This paper provides a framework for companies seeking to hire certification bodies, mainly for ISO 9001 certification, which help identify the companies that best fit the certification objectives. Additionally, a ranking of the main criteria to select certification bodies for ISO 9001 was obtained.

The decision-making method was applied to Brazilian companies from different sectors. As the results can vary between regions and sectors, this is a limitation of the research. In addition, the number of ten respondents could be higher to increase the robustness of the results.

The model assists companies looking for certification, mainly ISO 9001, in the selection of certification bodies contributing in the search for deeper implementations of QMS.

This work has the originality of the application of a decision-making method in the final process of ISO 9001 certification, scarce in the literature. In addition, it defines weights for the criteria involved in the process of selecting certification bodies.