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A Study of implementation of ISO Quality Assurance System for Administrative Staff in University
Shi-Hsuan Chan
School of Continuing Education in Chinese Culture University, MA, Graduate Institute of Educational Policy and Leadership, Tamkang U. tinana.tw@yahoo.com.tw

Prof. Flora C.I. Chang

Professor Graduate Institute of Educational Policy and Leadership, Tamkang University. fcic@mail.tku.edu.tw

Janet I. C. Lee**
Doctoral Candidate Department of Business Administration, National Chengchi University 92355510@nccu.edu.tw

ABSTRACT Many higher educations are working very hard to improve educational quality and services, which provide a route towards organization excellence. The purpose of this paper is to explore the application practice of ISO 9000 in SCE IN CCU. Firstly, the current contexts of ISO 9000 are summarised. Then the applications of ISO in educational institutions are discussed. Next, the present practice, barrier, and effectiveness are discussed based on both questionnaire and field surveys. Finally, a framework for improving organizational performance through ISO system based on the research findings is suggested. Keywords: ISO 9000, Continuing Education, Higher education

1.0 Introduction
The concept of lifelong learning means that higher education not only must promote the students ability for lifelong learning, but also actively reform into institutions of continuing education and develop functions of social services (Apps, 1988; Duke, 1992; Edwards, 1997; Field, 1996). The continuing education department uses new management mechanisms in search of innovative breakthrough, which is the key for various schools successful reformation into lifelong learning institutions. Many schools upgrade the quality of their schools by obtaining the ISO 9000 series of quality standards authentication from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Freeman (1993) and Chesterton (1994) believed that the ISO 9000 series of quality standards is one way to upgrade the quality of the schools. Healy (1994) believed that the ISO 9000 series of quality standards clearly defines the scope, goal, responsibility, process, system record and implementation, supervision and evaluation to effectively establish the quality of the school systems. Sallis and Hingley (1991) pointed out from the administrative viewpoint that the implementation of ISO can improve currently tedious administration procedures at universities. In the continuing education market, the School of Continuing Education at the Chinese Culture University (SCE at CCU) is first continuing education institution of a Taiwanese university to pass the ISO 9000:1994 authentication, and has received either the Outstanding or First Prize of private continuing education colleges from the Ministry of Education for nine consecutive years. This study includes the professional administrative personnel from the SCE at CCU as research subjects to investigate the degree of ISO quality guarantee system implementation in the said unit, the hurdles in its execution and benefits of its implementation, in order to serve as future reference in continuing education for introducing the ISO quality guarantee system and subsequent related studies.

2.0 ISO 9000 Series: Definition

The ISO 9000 series is a kind of standardized Quality Management System (QMS) that aims to achieve customer satisfaction through quality guarantee and operation of the quality management system so that the supplier can prevent the occurrence of substandard quality in every stage from the design, production to service. The five main clauses of ISO 9001:2000 are: Quality management system: utilizes the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) management principle to constitute the quality system by grouping current key quality category and its subcategory into management responsibility, resource management, product realization and measurement, analysis and improvement. Management responsibility: requires the organization to initiate the ISO quality management department or system, provides clear goals and communication methods, and the attitude of the management level should be professional, encouraging of contrasting views, error tolerant, and forms specialized teams according to the task needs of the organization, and replaces the bureaucratic system created by enormous and mixed

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levels with speed and flexibility. Resource management: refers to the organizations vast investment in resources when initiating the ISO, including human resources, financial and teachers, and design of an appropriate reward mechanism, make good use of modern information technology, rebuild a customer-centred organizational plan, coordination and organizational resources, in order to enable the organization to exhibit greater innovative ability. Product realization includes visible curriculum, equipment, as well as invisible services, and taking the customers needs as the biggest consideration to provide excellent quality products for the customers. Measurement, analysis and improvement refers to the preparation before the evaluation and evaluation following customer feedback as well as the improvement measures. It may be deduced from the above that the five main clauses of the ISO are closely linked and related to each other. The mentality of ISO 9001:2000 quality management has integrated the major principles of continual improvement and flow management (Gao & Lu, 2003).

3.0 Application of the ISO 9000 Series of Quality Guarantee System in Education
Since the ISO 9000 standards are internationally accepted and are appropriate for the quality management system of various trades and industries, it has therefore begun to receive the attention of the military units, enterprises, governmental agencies, and academic units, etc, except for the manufacturing industry. In recent years, the education field has also introduced the ISO quality guarantee system in succession to enhance the quality of the schools. It can be deduced from education-related confirmation studies that with regard to the study subjects, the subjects involved in the confirmation studies of ISO application in education institutions emphasizes the effectiveness of student learning and the evaluation method in the education unit and emphasizes the service efficiency of the staff and the degree of customer satisfaction in the administrative unit (Solomon, 1993). With regard to the induction method: Taiwanese schools that implement ISO mostly employ professional consulting firms to assist in the induction because the firms have a complete set of induction flow, and therefore could almost always pass the authentication within a short time whereas some American and British schools may research and develop the induction of the quality management model on their own based on the schools goals and needs (Solomon, 1993; Zheng, 1999; Lin, 2001; Wu, 2001). With regard to the induction steps: The procedure for ISO induction into educational institutions can generally be summarized into five major stages: First, the preparation stage: includes the establishment of an ISO quality group, diagnosis of the current school situation, guidance of ISO 9000, education training, etc.; Second, the establishment stage: includes concept definition, authority and responsibility analysis, establishment of the documentation system; Third, the realization stage: includes quality system implementation, holding review meetings, training of internal audit personnel; Fourth, the revision stage: includes implementation of internal audit, revision of the quality system; Fifth, the authentication stage: includes application for authentication, implementation of external audit, obtaining authentication and continual improvement (Storey, 1994; Stott, 1994; MacRobert, 1994; Information Technology Center at Yuanzhi University, 1999; Zheng, 1999; Lin, 2001; Wu, 2001).

4.0 Benefits and Hurdles of ISO implementation in the Education Institutions

Many scholars have discreetly pointed out the benefits of implementing the ISO quality guarantee system. A compilation of related literature concludes that the benefits of implementing the ISO 9000 quality guarantee model at schools include enhancing the customers degree of satisfaction (Sallis & Hingley, 1991; Solomon, 1993; Doherty, 1995), simplifying the administrative procedure (Sallis & Hingley, 1991; Moreland & Clark, 1998; Karapetrovic & Willborn, 1998), moulding the schools image (Sallis & Hingley, 1991; Zheng , 1998; Wu , 1999), establishing a standardized documentation system (Stott, 1994; Lundquist, 1997), promoting the teamwork culture and establishing common values (Salli & Hingley, 1991; Mary, 1994; Karapetrovic, Rajaman & Willborn, 1998; Moreland, 1998; Gelders, 1993), therefore achieving the goal of accomplishment in the teachers teaching and the students learning quality. All the above is sufficient in describing the contributions made by ISO 9000 in education, which not only expanded the layout application of ISO 9000, but also provided the educational field a kind of guidance and enlightenment (Sallis & Hingley, 1991; Solomon, 1993; Doherty, 1995). Although the implementation of ISO may greatly benefit the educational institutions, but in practice, the five aspects of hurdles in the induction of ISO initiation are summarized into extremely high induction fees (Lundquist, 1997, Moreland & Clar, 1998), incomprehensible ISO clauses (Sallis, 1990; Storey, 1994, Bergman & Klefsjo, 1995; Lundquist, 1997), administrative personnel rejection of opposition (Tannock, 1991; Storey, 1994; Lundquist, 1997), irregular quality of the authentication organization (Yan, 1996; Wu, 1998), and

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insufficient support from the high level management (Zhang & Lan , 1999; Zheng , 1999; Wu, 2001; Lin, 2001), demonstrating that the implementation of the ISO quality guarantee system is not without obstacles in the actual implementation, and the causes of the issues would also differ due to differences in the attributes of each unit. In line with this, the questionnaire on implementation hurdles in this study was drafted based on the above-mentioned aspects as reference in order to thoroughly understand the causes of the hurdles faced by the Culture University when promoting ISO implementation of the Ministry of Education in order to serve as the basis for the continual improvement of this unit.

5.0 Method
This study involves the professional administrative personnel (not including professional, part-time teacher and short-term project staff) at the administrative unit of ISO implementation at the SCE at the main CCU campus (not including other branches) as research subjects using the questionnaire survey method. There are four parts in the questionnaire, the first part for filling in the respondents basic information, the second part ISO 9001 implementation is based on the requirements of the ISO 9001:2000 clauses of the ISO, the degree of ISO implementation is defined as including quality management system, management responsibility, resource management, product realization, and measurement, analysis and improvement. The third part hurdles in ISO 9001 implementation was compiled based on referring to the studies of Moreland & Clark (1998), Lundquist (1997), Proost & Heyde (1995), Bergman & Klefsjo (1995), Stott (1995), Sallis (1990), Storey (1994), Tannock (1991), and integrated with the practical implementation of SCE at CCU. The fourth part benefits of ISO 9001 implementation is based on the studies of overseas scholars Sallis & Hingley (1991), Solomon (1993), Doherty (1995), Moreland & Clark (1998), and Karapetrovic & Willborn (1998) as reference for the next development in the questionnaire. In order to prevent the respondent from replying no comment, the questionnaire in this study adopts the Likerts scale, where the options ratings are completely agree (6 points), agree (5 points), slightly agree (4 points), slightly disagree (3 points), disagree (2 points) completely disagree (1 point), and therefore higher scores indicate higher conformity with the degree of conformity of the ISO 9001 implementation referred to in this study. This questionnaire has a total of 58 questions, the of each lies between .81-.97 after testing each aspect, the overall confidence level of the five main aspects of ISO 9001 implementation is .88; the confidence level of the initiation hurdles is .81; the confidence level of the implementation benefits is .97.

6.0 Results and Discussion

This study involved 168 professional administrative personnel (not including professional, part-time teacher and short-term project staff) at the SCE at CCU as research subjects and recollected 155 valid questionnaire (effective return rate of 92%). 68.40% of respondents are female, a majority of 39.40% are aged between 25 and 30 years old, regular staff accounts for 84.50%, document management personnel of the unit and unit supervisor account for 7.70% each. Most of the staff (36.10%) have been in service for more than 5 years; next are staff who have been in service for less than 1 year (21.30%); following that are 21 staff who have been in service 2-3 years (13.50%). With regard to the education level, most are university and graduate school graduates (constituting 87.00%). With respect to the overall degree of realization, the average score from the respondents is 4.75 points for the overall degree of comformity of the ISO 9001 implementation, of which the degree of quality management system implementation is the highest (4.89 points), the degree of management responsibility implementation is the lowest (4.56 points), and the rest in the order from high to low are product realization (4.80 points), measurement, analysis and improvement (4.75 points) and resource management (4.75 points). In the first aspect: quality management system, the average score of the first three questions related to the question on the degree of comformity to the repondents quality management system, the highest is this unit has established a standard workbook (5.10 points), the documents in this unit are based on the quality policy and work flow of the SCE at CCU (4.98 points), I understand the SCE quality policy (accomplished curriculum, dedicated service, professional teachers, excellent environment) of this school (4.95 points), all of which demonstrate that the units of the respondents have established their own standard workbook, and its contents were also formulated based on the quality policy of the said unit. Martinich (1997) pointed out that business production is to research the manufacturing plan, design and production system. The standard workbook is the work rules to achieve the companys goal, the main goal, and is also the basis of excellent quality guarantee (Krajewski & Ritzman, 1999). The findings of

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this study are consistent with Martinichs. The lowest average value is I can clearly identify the use of each document in the unit" (4.68). The researcher visited the units in person and discovered that most staff are more familiar with the business documents exclusive to them, but do not really understand the business documents of other colleagues. If a staff is on leave, their substitute may not be able to assist with the related business immediately. In the second aspect: management responsibilities: I can understand the requirements and expectations of existing customers (students, trainees) scored the highest average value (4.79 points). Based on the definition of service quality, the customers expectation is one of the major factors constituting service quality. A customer-centred organization must satisfy individual or popular demands as best they can (Daves & Heineke, 2003). The statement I am able to understand the requirements and expectations of potential customers (students, trainees) scored the lowest (4.32 points). The customers demand may vary greatly due to fast-changing circumstances, resulting in the respondents ability to grasp the testing and interview demands of existing students but may not easily grasp those of unseen potential customers. In the third aspect: resource management: The respondents average score for the degree of conformity to realize ISO 9001 resource management shows all equipments in the unit have a property label with the highest score (5.08 points), probably a result of the explicit stipulation of the standard document of the Technology Administration Center, SCE at CCU, that all equipments in the units must have a property label and the depositary should sign the item list for accountability and carry out routine inventory every 6 months. The lowest average value score is I am clear with the schools promotion of all the Ministry of Educations basic facility labels (4.55 points), the researcher speculates that this may be related to ill-defined labels found at public facilities such as the washroom, the elevators entrance, and the drinking water dispenser. Correa (1998) mentioned that a schools facilities and resources have considerable influence on the quality of the students learning. Herrera (2003) also explained that a schools physical facilities play an important role in the students learning process, aiding in enhancing the quality of learning and assisting the teachers and students to identify with each other. The facility resources is obviously important for the students. The learning quality may be enhanced and confusion reduced if the facility resources could be labelled better. In the fourth aspect: product realization: In the respondents view of the degree of comformity for realizing the ISO 9001 product realization, the first two statements with the highest average scores are this unit can properly manage the students (trainees) data files to avoid leakage and this unit can properly process customer complaints and suggestions in the shortest possible time (both scored 5.01 points). The quality handbook of the SCE at CCU explicitly pointed out that the students recognition and review records should be saved as appropriate at the end of each curriculum. Various units of the SCE at CCU take all customers complaints and suggestions very seriously and all the customers complaints and suggestions are processed and replied to in the shortest possible time at the instructions of the managing director. The lowest average score in this respect is this unit can handle facility or equipment breakdown issues in time (4.60 points), which may be related to the fact that all the facilities, equipments and project progresses at the SCE at CCU are serviced or purchased by the technology administration center that consists of only 8 staff and may be unable to service all the facilities and equipments promptly due to insuffient manpower. In the fifth aspect: measurement, analysis and improvement: The highest average score in this respect is this unit can appropriately and effectively manage customer complaints (5.01 points), and the lowest is this unit reviews whether the ISO implementation results conform to the requirements of the teachers and students (4.44 points). The researcher speculates that this may be due to a lack of actual follow-up records of the proposed improvement plans from the units after each audit meeting. With respect to hurdles in ISO implementation: In the respondents view of the degree of comformity of the hurdles in ISO 9001 implementation, the order from high to low is I do not clearly understand the operational procedures of ISO (3.94 points), lacking in ISO knowledge (3.81 points), the definitions of the ISO clauses are unclear and incomprehensible (3.74 points). These findings are an issue of the contents of the clauses. Lundquist (1997) pointed out that the teaching staffs workload would increase with procedural documentation. Storey (1994) also mentioned that most administrative personnel cannot smoothly handle the rewriting of current working routines into a standardized document or procedural document when required, which may be the reasons that the staff rejects it. The findings of this study are consistent with past literature. Low degree of support from high-level management (2.99 points) is the only one scoring lower than 3 points, demonstrating the affirming attitude of the respondents towards the support from the units high-level management. Finally with regard to the benefits of ISO implementation, in the respondents view of the benefits of ISO 9001 implementation, the average scores of the first three statements from high to low are:

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the highest conducive to clearer work procedures (4.68), conducive to convenient handover of work (4.60) and conducive to more attention from the manager on the administrative business flow (4.42), the lowest average score is promotes a positive working attitude among the staff (3.90 points). It may thus be deduced that the respondents generally thinks that the benefits of the ISO 9001 implementation are advantageous to clearer work procedure and more convenient work handover. This finding echoes the viewpoint proposed by other scholars (Henry & Marti, 1994; Moreland & Clark, 1998), who also hold a positive view.

7.0 Application and Suggestion

ISO 9001 is a documented management system and the documentation of quality handbooks, document control and record control are explicitly stated in the 2000 version. This study suggested that schools should organize regular ISO-related educational training or seminars so that new members can understand the ISO procedures and functions clearly. By allowing them to obtain sufficient on-the-job training, experienced document management personnel and the new staff could even share their experience with each other, pass on the ISO mentality, and therefore enhance the operational efficiency of the administration. Next, the unit supervisor should reinforce the explanations of the benefits of the ISO quality management system to internal administrative personnel in order to reduce the dread the staff felt towards the ISO while actively rewarding the high achieving units that regularly implement the ISO in order to excite the staff to value the ISO and implement the ISO mentality in their work. Furthermore, the ISO 9001 version 2000 pays more attention to the exchange of idea between internal members, and it is therefore proposed that the schools report information of ISO changes through the document management personnel during routine departmental meetings in order to benefit work handover and the operation of the substitution system. In addition, continual improvement is the main spirit of the ISO, and the SCE at CCU could only make remarkable progress with time if the school records the results of each internal and external audit. Finally, since the service targets of the various internal units at the university are students and internal colleagues, the work responsibility is only complete through satisfying the demands of internal colleagues, and it is therefore suggested that the schools management establish an internal appraisal mechanism among the units to enhance an atmosphere of mutual learning.

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