A Review of the Literature to understand Diversity in ISO 9001 adoption and the Achievement of benefits

This article presents a review of the literature on ISO 9001 to explain diversity

in implementation and benefits achieved. Our search found 721 articles on

the adoption of meta-standards such as ISO 9001, of these we found twelve

studies that provide insights into how different rationales and styles of

adoption relate to benefits achieved. Despite the great majority of studies

assuming homogeneous adoption of ISO9001, the review finds there is early

evidence to support a trend towards more and more international academic

works emphasizing heterogeneity in the adoption of the ISO 9001 standard to

explain how benefits arise. However, the approaches are fragmented so

future research is needed to integrate these research models to achieve a

better understanding of the direct and indirect effects of the different

variables.