Adoption of ISO9000 and its Relationship
with other Factors in China’s Service Industry
The ISO 9000 series of quality management
systems standard has been widely applied all over the world since its
introduction in 1987. By the end of 2013, ISO 9000 had been adopted by over
1,129,000 facilities in 189 countries. Both academics and practitioners are
interested in understanding the relationship between adoption of ISO 9000, and other
factors (Christmann & Taylor,
2006; Du, Yin, & Zhang, 2016; Fikru, 2014a, 2014b, 2016; Nakamura,
Takahashi, & Vertinsky, 2001; Pekovic, 2010; Wu, Chu, & Liu, 2007).
In 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics of China conducted an
Economic Census of the service firms. The descriptions of variables, the coding
are shown in the table. The data is available in Moodle.
Table:
Variables, their descriptions and coding
No | Variable name | Description of the variable | Coding |
1 | Year | Year the company certified | 2004; 2005; 2006; 2007; 2008 |
2 | Certification | Certification dummy | 0= not certified; 1=certified |
3 | Industry2 | Two digit industry code | 58= storage and transportation; 60= telecommunication 61=computer service 62=software 74= business services 75= Research and Development 76= specialized technology services 77= technology exchange and promotion |
5 | Stpyear | Year of the founding of the company | |
6 | I | Employee number | |
7 | I_yjs | Number of employees with master or
doctor | |
8 | I_benke | Number of employees with bachelor | |
9 | I_dz | Number of employees with diploma | |
10 | I_gaozhong | Number of employees with high school
education | |
11 | I_chuzhong | Number of employees with junior high
school or below | |
12 | Revenue | Sales of the company | |
13 | Profit_operation | Profit of the company | |
14 | Ksum | Total asset of the company | |
15 | Equity | Equity of the company | |
16 | Kpaid | Total capital | |
17 | Kstate | Capital from government | |
18 | Koversea | Capital from overseas | |
19 | Kother | Capital from other sources | |
20 | ROS | Return on sales | |
21 | ROA | Return on assets | |
22 | FDIpercent | Percentage of overseas investment in
the total investment | |
23 | DFIdummy | Overseas investment dummy | |
24 | agefirm | Age of the company | |
Required Task
You are expected to work in groups and write a research report. When
you work on your report, you need to use the dataset, and other sources such as
journal articles. If you use website material, please pay attention to the
quality of the material (e.g. government website or industry website etc.). There
is no word limit for the report. For the number of references, there should be
at least ten academic sources (journal articles, or books). It is encouraged to
use more relevant, high quality, and up to date sources in the report.
Students have a high degree of flexibility in doing the research.
The important thing is that the research should be well connected with the
literature.
The required structure
should be as following.
1.
Executive Summary: Major findings and major
recommendations
2.
Introduction: Background (of the case);
purpose (of this report); two to three research objectives for a study that you
would seek to conduct; and format (of this report).
3.
Write a short literature review of at least ten
academic sources relevant to your topic. Any source including books, journal
articles are acceptable, as long as they are relevant. You can also use a
particular website for some information. If websites are used they will be in
addition of the ten academic sources.
4.
Describe the methodology and justify your
choice.
5.
Analyses and findings: Run some analysis to
turn the data into useful information as follows:
a)
Descriptive statistics: Sample
characteristics will be described with descriptive analysis. This will include
at least the following analysis: Frequency, percentage; Measures of central
tendency; Measures of dispersion (variance, standard deviation)
b)
Inferential statistics: Inferential
statistics will be used to analyse relationship between variables. This will
include at least the following analysis (Chi-square, Pearson’s r, t-test, ANOVA test).
6.
Discussion and managerial advises: link your
findings to extant literature. Advise the management about the usefulness of
the findings.
7.
Limitations and directions for future
research. Suggestions of how the research can be improved.
8.
Include a correctly constructed reference
list of all sources used in the project, not just those used in the literature
review section. Appendices also should be attached which will include all the
analysis and graphs etc. that are not included in the body of the report.