Costs of ISO 9000 Certification

Companies wishing to ride the ISO 9001 train must do so for both short-term and long-term benefits. The short-term benefits include access to various global and government grants and programs as well as marketing advantages. The long-term advantages include improved reputation as well as sustained or improved quality of the company’s products and services, because the internal standards imposed by the ISO are revealed in the quality of the output.

The bright spot in ISO 9000/9001 is that the certification standards are purely internal. Indeed, “ISO 9000 does not specify a level of quality or performance for any product or service provided by an organization. That is left to the organization to determine with its customers” (Goetsch & Davis, p. 226). The advantage is that innovation is (less) encumbered by this bureaucracy.

It’s unclear whether this applies to industry-specific ISO certifications – some companies pursue multiple certifications – but suppose it does. One can imagine Thomas Edison asking some sort of standards body whether it is OK if he makes the electric lightbulb and moves beyond candles and gas lights. What if the standards body denied his partition? (“We’ve been using candles for hundreds of years and gas lights for more than a century, and they worked fine.”) What if the body or individuals within the body demand some sort of kickback for certification? What if the standards body shared the lightbulb idea to Edison’s competitors? What if Edison fell out of favor with the standards body and was denied future improvements to his light bulb?

The point is that certification by the ISO or any external organizations is extremely open to corruption. The ISO does have another certification, ISO 37001, relevant to corruption, or at least bribery. This is achieved through “fostering a culture of integrity, transparency, and trust within organizations” (International Standard Organization, 2025). The ISO most likely does not itself hold ISO 37001, as the ISO develops standards, and does not certify against them, leaving certification to independent third parties. Rules for thee and not for me.

Further, was Thomas Edison the type of man capable of displaying that level of sycophancy? No. No great man is obsequious.

A company or other organization must perform a cost-benefit analysis before getting or renewing ISO 9000 certification.

Besides access to global markets and government contracts, another benefit is improved internal standards such as customer focus, evidence-based decision making, process improvement, and so on (Goetsch & Davis, p. 227). Another benefit – improved quality of services or products – is a claimed byproduct of these improved internal standards.

The costs are financial as well as cultural.

There are multiple fees involved in obtaining and maintaining ISO certification. Besides the cost of the initial certification, there are annual audit costs, and certification must be renewed every three years. There are also costs associated with the person or people doing the certification, such as travel costs, hotel fees, etc.

There are also cultural costs that come along with ISO 900/9001 certification. The most important is that certification imposes a bureaucracy, which will stifle innovation. The employees most responsible for the innovation will move on to another company since ISO requires commitment by all employees.

Olivier Boiral (2012) revealed another cultural cost. In that paper, he compares the process of obtaining ISO 9000 to an educational “paper chase” – meaning that there is a disconnect between the acquisition of an academic degree from the knowledge that degree ordinarily entails. The consequences are similar to the “paper chase”: rote preparation, procrastination, short-term focus, and cheating.

There is a middle ground available to some companies. Imagine that an established company wishes to expand into the government market. They would need ISO certification, and therefore pay the fees and make the required cultural changes. If the company does well in the government market, they can maintain the ISO certification. If not, they can simply not renew certification. The cost of certification lingers, however: the company culture has changed, and the innovative employees have left.

References

Boiral, O. (2012). ISO certificates as organizational degrees? Beyond the rational myths of the certification process. Organization Studies, 33(5-6), 633-654. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840612443622

Goetsch, D. L. & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9^th ed.). Pearson.

International Standard Organization. (2025). ISO 37001: Anti-bribery management systems — Requirements with guidance for use. https://www.iso.org/standard/37001