According to the ISO Survey 2005, in December 2004 there were issued nearly 700,000 ISO 9000 certificates in the world, thus reflecting the huge importance that ISO 9000 certification has assumed for companies across the planet. This paper presents results of a research project that we are leading in Portugal, where we try to make a deeper analysis of this ISO 9000 worldwide phenomenon. We will provide some key results that derive from a statistical analysis performed over ISO 9000 data, which try to answer the following issues: (1) Is there a relationship between the number of certified companies per country and its competitiveness? (2) Is there a relationship between the percentage of GDP invested in R&D and the number of certified companies per country or the number of companies with innovation activities? (3) Is there a relationship between a country's entrepreneurial structure, in terms of companies' sizes and activity sectors, and its number of certified companies? (4) Is there a relationship between the exports volume per country and its number of certified companies? (5) Are there any relationships between economic development indicators and the corresponding number of ISO 9000 certified organisations in a given country? (6) What is the evolution since 1993 of ISO 9000 certification in the different countries? What are the market evolution perspectives? (7) Is there any model that allows us to characterise the certification market evolution? We believe that these results assume a very important contribution for studying the ISO 9000 phenomenon diffusion/evolution and mainly for companies and certification bodies across the world.

Volume 20

Numbers 11-12