الملخص الإنجليزي
Several studies have been carried out investigating aspects relating to the implementation of the ISO 9000 quality management standard in organizations operating in different countries. These aspects include the reasons for seeking certification, the process and cost of achieving certification, the perceived benefits, and the shortcomings of implementation. However, the issue of whether or not these aspects differ according to organization size or sector type has not been sufficiently and appropriately addressed in the literature. This report summarizes the results of a study investigating this issue. Data required for this study were collected from 42 randomly selected organizations of different size and sector type operating in the Sultanate of Oman. The Kruskal-Wallis test was adopted for testing 12 research hypotheses. The results show that there is no strong evidence to suggest that the above aspects differ significantly according to organization size or sector type. In other words, the motives for implementation, the process and cost of achieving certification, the perceived benefits, and the shortcomings are the same regardless of organizational differences. This study confirms that the ISO 9000 quality management standard can be applied to all business sectors and all sizes of organization.
