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Recently, a number of environmental laws and regulations have been enacted to hold organizations more accountable for their environmental responsibilities. The International Standards Organization (ISO), issued ISO 14000 environmental standards to assist entities worldwide in managing their environmental requirements and to ensure that their environmental policies and practices conform to their missions and goals. ISO 14000 environmental standards are divided into six categories: (1) environmental management systems; (2) environmental auditing; (3) environmental performance evaluation; (4) environmental labeling; (5) life‐cycle assessment; and (6) environmental aspects in product standards. These standards assist entities in preparing step‐by‐step implementation plans to adopt an adequate and effective environmental management system, conduct proper environmental audits, and successfully become registered to ISO 14001. This article presents a 15‐step process which accountantsshould suggest to their organizations to achieve ISO 14001 certification.

This study aims to explore the barriers to implementation of ISO 9000 in China, and to identify how these barriers can be overcome.

Using a structural questionnaire survey, this paper examines the main barriers for enterprises in effective implementation of the ISO 9001 standard.

This paper highlights the problems in implementing the standard, which determines the sustainable implementation, including: short‐sighted goal for “getting certified”; over‐expectation on the ISO 9001 standard; mandatory requirement (not wholehearted commitment) in some industries; and following others (the trend) in certification. With regard to the effective audit of the ISO 9001 standard, the main problems were explored, including: lack of commitment from some certifying bodies; excessive competition between certifying bodies; and offering of a total packaged service from consultancy to certification by certifying bodies.

The ISO 9000 series have permeated into all industrial sectors. Although there are many stories of successful adoption of ISO 9001, problems in implementing the standards need to be explored, which may affect the sustainable implementation.

Based on the analysis, the paper proposes that the government should improve the legal framework and enforcement schemes to strengthen supervision and control for effective auditing of ISO 9000 standards.

This research aims to establish the applicability of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 18404 standard to the service sector, identify any required amendments and identify the critical success factors and barriers to deploying the standard within the service sector.

The study used a qualitative approach by interviewing operational excellence (OPEX) professionals who work in the service sector.

The findings indicate a significant lack of knowledge about the existence of the standard and a general scepticism regarding the applicability of the current ISO 18404 standard to the service sector.

Limited examples of the application of ISO 18404 in organisations exist, as only a few organisations have adopted the standard. Therefore, the research focussed on the challenges and obstacles that experienced OPEX professionals perceived could be an issue.

The study will aid service sector organisations in understanding the standard and, subsequently, determine whether to pursue it as part of an OPEX programme. This research is the first study on the application of ISO 18404 to the service sector.

This paper gives the background to the ISO 18404:2015 standard and explains its rationale. It aims to rebut the Oudrhiri et al. (2022) paper. Furthermore, this paper adds further evidence of the misplacement and unfitness for use of the standard, as evidenced in the previous work by Antony et al. (2021, 2022).

A point-counterpoint methods approach with a literature review of studies available on ISO 18404:2015 to respond to the Oudrhiri et al. (2022) study.

The findings indicate that Oudrhiri et al.'s (2022) work is not open minded in relation to ISO18404. Each point raised in the Oudrhiri et al. (2020) study has been answered and counter argued.

Other than Antony et al.'s three studies (2021 and 2022) and Oudrhiri et al.’s (2022) study empirical studies looking into the impact of the ISO 18404 standard in the literature were limited. As the literature has shown, many companies are not utilising the standard given its current format; hence, a lack of information relating to the practical implementation is sparse.

The findings indicate that Oudrhiri et al.'s (2022) work can be answered and counter argued.

This study consolidates and strengthens the findings from the three studies by Antony et al. (2021 and 2022) and acts as a rebuttal to the Oudrhiri et al. (2022) study.

This work aims to present existing management system standards (MSSs) published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) through a bibliometric analysis, thereby outlining their academic research status and highlighting their relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as to environmental, social and governance (ESG) themes.

The study firstly retrieves a preliminary set of MSSs standards from ISO and filters it in accordance with certain exclusion/inclusion criteria. Secondly, a bibliometric search is performed in the database Scopus. Thirdly, performance analysis is conducted to quantitatively measure the scientific output in academia, and science mapping of co-occurrences of keywords is applied to identify related topics. Thereby, the standards’ relationships to sustainability are outlined. Eventually, the work discusses future research opportunities.

The findings reveal that whereas research on MSSs focuses predominantly on only a few standards by now, there are actually numerous further standards that address sustainability-relevant topics, which are getting increasing attention among scholars as measured by the number of publications. Therefore, an action plan for future research is derived. Moreover, the findings support the argument of integrating MSSs to cover a broad range of corporate sustainability issues.

The paper connects the concepts of MSSs and sustainability, an upcoming research branch yet characterized by shortage of academic studies (given that research continues to focus on a few standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001). The work therefore opens up the line for more in-detail research on less known but nevertheless sustainability-relevant ISO MSSs.

Generic quality management system standard ISO 9001 and the automotive quality management system standard IATF 16949 both require organisations to demonstrate continual improvement in their customer satisfaction and the number of non-conformities identified during quality system audits. However, the long-term trends of these two parameters under ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 standards are not researched so far. It is expected that under continual improvement, organisations will achieve a step-function/stair-case shaped pattern. This study evaluates if this expectation is true when long-term performance of certified organisations is assessed.

A longitudinal exploration of three organisations certified to ISO 9001 standard and three certified to IATF 16949 standard is done. The observations are further substantiated using secondary data for the same ten years period about customer satisfaction of the major automobile manufacturers.

It is observed that none of the two indicators, i.e. the customer satisfaction and number of non-conformities, in any of the six organisations show step-wise/stair-case type improvement. All indicators followed random up and down patterns like ocean waves. It is paradoxical that certified organisations are claiming continual improvement and are remaining certified but there is actually no long-term improvement.

Longitudinal studies for the generic quality management standard ISO 9001 and the quality system standard for automotive sector IATF 16949 are rare. The revelation about ocean wave patterns observed in the long-term trends for customer satisfaction and the number of non-conformities in ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 certified organisations is a startling finding. It is outlandishly different from the conventional perception of a staircase-styled continual improvement pattern expected a priori in certified organisations.

This viewpoint paper aims to discuss sustainable digitalisation of facilities management (FM) through the implementation of the newly recognised International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards within the ISO 41000 series.

This viewpoint paper provides a review of the literature of the recent ISO documents and academic study. The content is also dependent on the authors’ opinions and interpretation.

FM is currently shifting emphasis towards a strategic focus through the adoption of the new recognised international ISO standards that consider sustainable digitalisation in business decisions. However, the FM sector is encountering potential risks to the implementation of the new recognised international ISO standards. Digitalisation is one kind of force that has shaped the management of the built environment and FM recently and rapidly, especially in the Covid-19 period. This is impacting the FM industry. As standardisation aims at establishing a constantly evolving baseline of proven practices, standardisation can be considered a part of sustainable FM. It is believed that standardised and strategic level support is crucial for the smooth adoption of sustainable FM practices and processes. Standards such as the ISO standards, applied to the global FM industry, help in objectively quantifying the added value of FM to the core business. Advanced technology and digitalisation can contribute to the sustainability of any profession and industry, but it also requires a community to tackle the problems.

This paper contributes to the FM industry by making recommendations for improvement in the use of digitalisation. In summary, the significant finding of this viewpoint paper is that digitalisation offers both possibilities and problems in the application of the new recognised international ISO standards within the FM industry.

The purpose of the paper is to pay homage to Dorothy E. Smith (1926–2022), and her lifelong significance for organizational ethnography. Building on Smith, the empirical purpose of the paper is to analyze professional boundary setting on behalf of innovation management as it occurred in the recent International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committees (TC) 279 committee on innovation management.

The paper is an ethnographic study of the drafting and publication of a novel international management standard on innovation management, the ISO 56000-series published in 2019. It is based on fieldwork from the ISO committee and integrates relevant standardization documents, observations and interviews.

The paper analyzes four occasions for textual professional boundary work ranging from negotiations of content and choice of ISO standard formats to the unprecedented high-level liaison agreements across international organizations. In each instance, the analysis depicts distinct textual features related to ISO standardization. The analysis shows how the standard becomes positioned as extending and complementing the ISO 9001, not as a radical, freestanding alternative to quality management.

The paper presents original data from the ISO standardization committee. It develops Smith's general textual ontology into a theoretical framework for analyzing how professional boundary setting occurs in the textually structured context of ISO standardization. It gives attention to the implications of questions of objectification and standardization as these apply to contemporary research into innovation and organization.

ISO 18404:2015 standard defines the proficiencies to the attainment of distinct competency levels with either Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma or separately combined strategy Lean Six Sigma (LSS). The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed investigation of the applicability of current LSS competency standard in SMEs and examine the need for further improvement.

A qualitative-based semi-structured interview method was utilized globally by interviewing a group of LSS professionals with knowledge about the LSS implementation working in different leading organizations. All participants were asked to review the standard before the interview process to ensure that they are familiar with the standard.

The results reveal that the current ISO 18404:2015 standard does not fit SMEs to implement the LSS approach as it has several shortfalls that need to be fixed before its adoption or an urgent need to develop a more customized LSS standard for SMEs. The outcome further helps organizations understand theoretical knowledge about ISO 18404:2015, its role in operational excellence implementation, pros, cons, critical success factors and required changes for further improvement within the standard.

There were very limited baseline studies in the literature. A mixed method strategy that includes qualitative and quantitative data would yield better data so that more robust outcomes can be derived from the research.

To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical research on the applicability of ISO 18404:2015 for SMEs, which encapsulate opinions of LSS professionals working in several SMEs.

Little attention has been paid to how quality management systems (QMSs) are optimized by supportive employee behavior. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on the inclusion of human factors in the ISO 9000 family of standards, identify deficiencies in the standard's current treatment of these issues, and offer recommendations on how human resources (HRs) can be better integrated into these business management standards.

This concept paper presents a survey of both academic and practitioner literature on the topic of HR and its treatment in quality standards. The focus is restricted to consideration of human factors that are specifically identified in the ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 9004:2009 standards.

ISO 9001 and 9004 include some HR topics, but their treatment is insufficient to meet the demands of today's business environment. The recent addition to the ISO 9000 family, ISO 10018 – Quality Management – Guidelines on People Involvement and Competence (ISO, 2012b) will help to address the deficiency if adopted by the marketplace. To improve the usefulness of ISO 9000 standards, the breadth of human factors should be enhanced both extensively to include components of workplace culture and work design and intensively to require more rigorous treatment of the HR considerations already included in the standards.

There is a need for more comprehensive consideration of human contributions to quality if organizations are to optimize the value they receive from their HR and their investment on the ISO 9001 QMS.

The limited references linking HR and the ISO 9000 series of standards have focussed upon how human factors contribute (or not) to the successful use of the ISO 9000 standards. In contrast, this paper offers a comprehensive and integrative examination of how the ISO 9000 QMS standards could more comprehensively and effectively incorporate HR into a firm's practices.