Journal of Vocational Education and Training, Volume 56, Number 2, 2004

The Strengths and Weaknesses of

ISO 9000 in Vocational Education

THERESA L. BEVANS-GONZALES
Pennsylvania State University, USA
AJAY T. NAIR
University of Pennsylvania, USA

ABSTRACT ISO 9000 is a set of quality standards that assists an organisation

to identify, correct and prevent errors, and to promote continual
improvement. Educational institutions worldwide are implementing ISO
9000 as they face increasing external pressure to maintain accountability for
funding. Similar to other countries, in the United States vocational
education providers are implementing ISO 9000. Although ISO has been
successful in manufacturing and service industries, the application to
education is relatively new and not without its problems. This study used
focus group methods to investigate ISO 9000 implementation at nine career
and technical centers in Pennsylvania. The findings indicated that there are
strengths of ISO 9000 in vocational education such as an improvement in
leadership. However, a number of weaknesses of ISO 9000 were also
reported, e.g. the time-consuming implementation process. The findings are
intended to assist career and technical educators during the
implementation of ISO 9000.

In an increasing global environment, educational institutions (like other

social institutions) are pressured to be more ‘efficient’, work better with
less funding, meet the needs of the market and engage in never-ending
quality improvement efforts (Welch, 1998). In addition, there are an
increasing number of calls for educational institutions to be held
accountable from federal and institutional funding bodies, communities,
parents and students. According to Ladd (2001), educational
accountability is dominating educational policy discussion and is a broad
concept that can be addressed in a variety of ways, one of which is to
introduce market-based reforms to education. Examples of such reforms

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include the Business Excellence Model (BEM), Malcolm Baldrige, Total

Quality Management (TQM) and ISO 9000.
The focus of this article is on the last of these quality frameworks, as
ISO 9000 is one such market-based quality system that has become an
attractive option for a growing number of educational institutions. While
ISO 9000 is being implemented in primary, secondary and higher
education, the main concern of this article is with the most recent
application of ISO 9000 to vocational education and training institutions
in the United States. Although the study was conducted in one country,
the results contribute valuable information to the understanding of ISO
9000 implementation in vocational education that may apply to
institutions in other countries as well.
The remainder of this article is organised as follows: the empirical
research related to ISO 9000 and ISO 9000 in education; the methodology
and data collection, the research findings; and the conclusions and
implications for practice and future research.

Background of the Study

The concept of quality standards has existed since the ancient times with
the practice of standardising stones and wooden gauges for measurement
in the civilisations of the Egyptians and Samarians. Traces of standards
for goods and products can be found throughout history with the
merchants and trades men in the Roman Empire, China, India, Japan and
the Islamic world. In the fourteenth century, the King of England
standardised the quality of silver and gold, and during the industrial
revolution in Europe, a set of strict standards were set up in the industry
of textiles. In the early nineteenth century, a series of work standards
were developed under the principle of ‘scientific management’ by
Frederick Winslow Taylor (Hoyle, 2001).
The first forms of modern quality standards were developed during
World War II by the Allies for both products and processes. During the
post-war era, in England, the use of these inspection standards gradually
increased, and the standards were soon recognised by commercial
industries and manufacturers (Stimson, 1998). The British Standards
Institution (BSI) created the first real commercial quality standard series
in 1979, which they published and released as the BS5750 series of
standards (Wealleans, 2000). In the 1980s, the BS5750 became the
cornerstone for national quality and many other countries used BS5750
as a basis for their own quality systems, including the USA, where the
ANSI 90 series of quality standards was created.
During this same period, the International Organisation for
Standardisation (ISO) appointed a group to develop a set of international
quality standards. The group created the Open Systems Interconnection
(OSI), which ensured that products from different organisations and

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different countries could interact in specific areas. In 1987, ISO published

the first set of quality standards, ISO 9000: 1987, which were adopted by
BSI in the United Kingdom and the European Committee for
Standardisation Commission.
Therefore, at the end of the 1980s there existed three sets of
standards published by different entities, which were basically the same
ISO 9000: 1987 standards. Finally, in 1994, the ISO 9000: 1994 series of
standards were published and adopted by more than 60 countries in
place of their national standards. Between 1987 and 1994 the standards
underwent approximately 250 changes that were intended for
clarification (Tricker & Sherring-Lucas, 2001).
In the most recent revision, the ISO 9000: 2000 quality management
system consists of a set of quality standards that have been revised and
improved in order to better be applied to a wider variety of organisations.
The objective of ISO has changed from a model for quality assurance to a
set of standards for effective quality management. The previous
standards of ISO 9001: 1994, ISO 9002: 1994 and ISO 9003: 1994 have been
integrated into the ISO 9001: 2000. Organisations previously certified
under ISO 9002: 1994 or ISO 9003: 1994 are now required to seek re-
certification under ISO 9001: 2000. Similarly, organisations certified under
ISO 9001 must update their quality systems to meet ISO 9001: 2000
requirements. These changes represent a more user-friendly standard for
educational institutions. Specifically, the language, flexibility and
structure of the new standard are inherently more compatible with the
operation of educational institutions (Praxiom Research Group Ltd, 2002).
In an organisation, ISO 9000 functions as a quality management
system that consists of a series of non-specific quality standards that can
be applied to the system. The standards provide a solid foundation for
continuous quality improvement without changing the way the
organisation functions. Before becoming registered to the standards, an
organisation must comply with four levels of documentation. These levels
include creating a quality manual, documenting procedures and forms,
documenting instructions and documenting supporting information. Once
an organisation has implemented all levels of the quality standards, an
audit is performed where documents and performance of the
organisation are checked and compared with the ISO 9000 standards. The
organisation may or may not be certified to the ISO 9000 standards,
depending upon the success of the audit (Harding et al, 2000).
This certification aids organisations in the market place due to the
customer perception of ‘certification’ as ‘quality’. When purchasing
products from companies certified under ISO 9000, a customer can be
assured that the product is the same quality despite the fact that they
may buy it in China, Norway or Brazil. This quality system also assists
companies as a business reference between clients and organisations
(International Organization for Standardisation, n.d.). Furthermore, the

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ISO 9000 standards allow businesses from all over the world to apply the
same rules and regulations to their systems of production.

ISO 9000 in Education

Originally created as a quality system for the manufacturing industry, the
ISO 9000 international quality standards are rapidly being implemented in
many service-type organisations including educational institutions. While
no formal statistics exist on the number of educational institutions
involved, there are a growing number of ISO 9000 registered schools and
US educators are not alone in this recent trend to adopt this quality
management system. A variety of educational institutions in Canada,
Singapore, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Australia have started to
implement ISO 9000 (Zuckerman & Rhodes, 2000).
Among the benefits that educational institutions see from the ISO
9000 quality management system are improvements in the organisational
structure and day-to-day operations. According to Waks & Moti (1999) ‘It
checks how the system is being run based on the assumption that proper
functioning coupled with the development of internal control will yield
better educational and scholastic results’. However, ISO 9000 does not
come without costs and it is estimated that most school districts have
spent $15,000 in registration fees with costs of $10,000 a year for an
annual audit (Zuckerman & Rhodes, 2000). These figures do not take into
consideration any costs that an educational institution has invested in
the time required to implement the system or of the time that employees
spend away from their regular jobs working on the implementation
process.
In 1997, both Europe and the USA developed a set of ISO 9000
guidelines for education and training institutions. These include the
American ANSI/ASQC Z1.11-1996 Quality Assurance Standard – Guidelines
for the Application of ANSI/ISO/ASQC Q9001 or Q9002 to Education and
Training Institutions and the European Application of ISO 9000 Standards to
Education and Training: interpretation and guidelines in a European
perspective.
The goal of the American version of the standards is to serve
primarily two purposes:
• to provide education and training institutions with the benefits of
nationally and internationally accepted requirements standards for
quality assurance;
• to improve the communication between training and education
institutions and the independent registrars (American standards 1996).
However, the USA version of the standards is similar to the original
version of the ISO 9000 standards, and is very broad and non-specific,
making it difficult for an educational institution to interpret and

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implement. In contrast, the European guidelines for the ISO 9000

standards offer a more extensive, in-depth review of the ISO 9000
standards, and their effects on education and training institutions. These
guidelines are based on research conducted in 1995 in several European
countries (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands
and Denmark) by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational
Training.
While no specific government policies appear to exist regarding the
implementation of ISO 9000, in the late 1980s and continuing through the
1990s, committees and policies began to appear around the globe that
supported market-driven, more efficient, quality measures in education.
For example, the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education
and the policy Higher Education: quality and diversity in the 1990s in
Australia and the Quality Promotion Unit in South Africa (Vidovich et al,
2000). In England, the Joint Planning Group for Quality Assurance in
Higher Education was established (Roffe, 1998) and, according to Welch
(1998), encouraging educational institutions to serve the economy more
efficiently and take account of the economic requirements of the country
was made clear in the 1987 UK White Paper. In Hong Kong, the Education
Commission created a comprehensive policy to improve schools in the
text ECR7: quality school education and soon after established the Quality
Assurance Unit (Cheng, 2002).
Despite the fact that educational institutions around the world have
started to implement quality assurance systems, such as ISO 9000, there
is still a debate surrounding the relevance of this quality management
system for education. Proponents of ISO 9000 state that since there is an
amazing rate of change in the fields of technology, programs of continual
improvement and closed-loop control are appropriate and necessary for
the educational systems in order to standardise a process that
incorporates values of the customer (Waks & Moti, 1999). In addition, ISO
9000 is seen by some to improve education by introducing the private
sector ideals of efficiency, reliability and free-market competition to the
field. Authors such as John Peters (1999) support ISO 9000 as a global
quality system for educational institutions as a tool to assure that
educational providers are keeping their promises to the student-
customer, not necessarily to have the education content standardised.
Peters recognises the value of standardising procedures, but also the
difficulty of standardising books, relationships and the dynamic class
environment.
On the other side, some see privatisation and market influence as
having a negative impact on the educational systems, equality, or
individual and social development, which may actually decrease the level
of education quality (Welch, 1998). Authors, such as Geoffrey Alderman
(1999) propose that a critical evaluation of the success or failure of
concepts such as ISO 9000 and Total Quality Management (TQM) is

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lacking. According to Alderman, ‘quality in higher education is not about

satisfying the customer (i.e. the student), but is rather about changing the
student, which is not the same thing at all ... an ISO 9000 approach will
not and cannot lead, by itself, to the achievement of quality: the most it
can lead to is short-to medium, to mid-term bureaucratic procedural
compliance’. Clearly, from the previous studies on ISO 9000 in education,
it is obvious that further research is needed to fully understand the
impact of ISO 9000 implementation in education. In the remainder of this
article, the researchers address the paucity in the literature on this
important topic by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of ISO 9000
implementation in vocational education.

ISO 9000 in USA Vocational Education

Similar to other nation-states, the USA government is supporting quality
assurance in education at both the federal and state levels. In October
1998 the Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Amendment
was passed. This federal government legislation has a number of
objectives that promote reform and innovation in USA vocational and
technical education. In addition to student improvement, the Perkins Act
will ensure continual improvement, an optimal return on federal
investment monies and puts into effect a USA state performance
accountability system (Office of Vocational and Adult Education, 1999). A
number of educational institutions in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado and
Delaware have already qualified for the implementation process of the
standards (Zuckerman & Rhodes, 2000)
At the state level, the Pennsylvania Department of Education funded
the implementation and piloting of the ISO 9000 standards at the career
and technical centers (CTC) involved in this study. According to Nair
(2002), the Pennsylvania Department of Education feels that ISO 9000
creates a workforce development system in career and technical
education that is accountable, cost-effective, and strives for continuous
improvement. Nair (2002) has done the most extensive research on ISO
9000 in US career and technical education, and has explored ISO 9000 as a
quality management system used to achieve performance accountability.
In his research, Nair (2002) discovered that the ability of school
employees to make decisions and problem solve were improved by the
ISO 9001 quality initiative. In addition, Nair (2002) reported that, after ISO
9000 implementation, the schools had an improvement of their general
processes and an increased credibility in the community. Nair (2002) also
discovered that schools face difficulties in implementing ISO 9000, such
as an increased amount of paperwork and lack of employee time to
commit to the implementation process. With data obtained from nine
focus groups conducted at CTC in Pennsylvania, the authors explored the
qualitative data that will be used to advance the research on ISO 9000 in

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educational institutions and inform the decision of a CTC to implement

ISO 9000 as their quality management system. The objective of the focus
groups was to obtain the feelings and opinions about the ISO 9000
experiences from the employees at a CTC.

Population
The study consisted of a focus group conducted at nine CTC in the state
of Pennsylvania during the months of January to March 2002. The
participating career and technical schools were SUN Area Career and
Technology Center, Berks County Career and Technology Center, Steel
Center AVTS, Erie County Technical School, Middle Bucks Institute of
Technology, Mercer County Career Center, Delaware County Technical
Schools, Venango Technology Center and Greater Altoona Career and
Technology Center. The Vocational Educations studies in this research
project have the common organisational goal of meeting the training and
technical education needs of local youth and adults in their respective
communities.

Selection of Subjects
Subjects for the focus groups were selected using a simple random
selection. From the school administration, the researcher obtained a list
of all employees and their job titles or classification. A computer was
utilised to create a table of the list of employees, separating them into
broad occupational categories of administration, faculty, staff, and the
mutually exclusive categories of male and female. Participants were
selected randomly from each cell of the table until the size and
composition of the group reflected the population of the center. Groups
of 12 were selected since more than 12 participants are difficult to
manage and do not promote active involvement by all individuals. A
selection of 12 also provides for the possibility that at least two
participants will not show up for the focus group (Stewart & Shamdasani,
1990). Any subject who declined to participate in the group was replaced
using the same method of simple random selection.

Focus Group Protocol

Invitations
Invitations were sent to all focus group participants by a fax machine. The
invitations were handed out by the administration as this encouraged
employee participation. The letter gave a brief description of the
discussion’s date, time, location and topic. At a number of the schools,
the discussion took place around a meal or refreshments, which was also

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mentioned in the letter ‘since food tends to relax participants and

encourages participations by eliminating concerns about meals’ (Stewart
& Shamdasani, 1990).

Location
Since the environment in which a focus group is held is a factor in the
ability of the group to achieve the objective of the discussion and the
moderator to adequately lead the discussion, it was important to choose
the correct location for the focus groups (Greenbaum, 1988). In fact,
focus groups function at optimal levels if they are held in a familiar and
close location to the participants (Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990).
Therefore, all of the focus groups were conducted at the schools. The
discussions were conducted in a comfortable room such as the school
restaurant (closed to normal customers for the duration of the
discussion) or a conference room. The seating included tables and was
arranged to be comfortable and to easily encourage participation in the
conversation (Greenbaum, 1988).

Discussion
Stage I: introduction. At the beginning of the focus group session, the
moderator welcomed everyone to the session and thanked everyone for
attending. The moderator made introductions to the group regarding her
name, company, role in the discussion and information on length of the
session. Participants were given a general overview of the discussion and
introduced to the concept of the video camera to avoid discomfort.
Ground rules about the discussion were also provided and an importance
was given to the opinions of each person. The informed consent forms
were discussed, signed and collected (Greenbaum, 1988).

Stage II: questions. The first set of questions served as a warm-up/ice

breaker for the groups and consisted of general information about each
person. In a round robin style discussion so each person would have the
chance to speak, the participants were asked the following questions:
• Name?
• Job title?
• How long have you employed at the center?
• How long have you been employed in vocational education?
• Are you a member of the quality team?
The next question was intended to warm-up the participants to the
subject of discussion, which was ISO 9000. The moderator used an easel
that contained three columns of categories marked positive, negative and
neutral. The participants were asked to randomly call out an adjective

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that described their personal feelings about ISO 9000 or their experience
with ISO 9000. The moderator would then write each adjective in the
corresponding category for the participants to view.
After the participants described their feelings of ISO 9000 in general,
they were given a handout with the eight management principles of ISO
9000 along with the definitions. These principles include customer focus,
leadership, involvement of people, process approach, system approach
to management, continual improvement, factual approach to decision
making and mutually beneficial supplier relationships (Goetsch & Davis,
2002). From these eight principles, the groups were asked to express
their feelings and opinions about how ISO 9000 affected these items in
their school. The questions were phrased, for example, how do you feel
ISO 9000 has affected the customer focus of the center? What impact has
ISO 9000 had on the leadership of the center?
After completing the conversation about the eight principles of ISO
9000, the participants were then asked to do a sentence completion
activity that was following by a round-robin discussion of their answers.
The sentence completion exercise contained the following questions:
• When I first found out that my school would be using ISO 9001, I felt …
• Now, as I think about the impact of ISO 9001, what really helped the
process was …
• What got in the way was …
• I was surprised that …
Stage III: closing. During the closing stage of the discussion, the moderator
asked each participant to identify one item from the discussion that was
important. Then, the moderator gave a brief summary of the discussion
topics that surfaced and highlighted the most important items. The
moderator asked the group if anything was missed or if they wished to
add any other comments. The moderator then thanked the group for
their participation signaling the end of the session.

Findings
In order to obtain and analyse the data from the focus groups effectively,
the researcher utilised the methodological approach of grounded theory,
which consists of identifying categories or ‘coding’ the data collected
from the people under study. These categories are not representations of
the data, but indicated by the data and can be used to reflect patterns
(Dey, 1999). Therefore, the data received from the focus groups at each
CTC was recorded and compared with the data from the other CTC’s. The
data was then ‘coded’ into two categories, strengths and weaknesses of
ISO 9000 implementation in a CTC.

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Strengths of ISO 9000 Implementation

All of the centers, especially, the centers that are in the beginning of the
implementation process, view ISO 9000 as having a beneficial future for
the center. Many focus group members expressed a feeling of hope with
statements like ‘I hope’, and ‘change is for the better’. They also said, ‘it
sounds like it (ISO 9000) could be a really positive thing for the school, it
gives us hope’ and ‘later we will have more involvement, when we have to
process our orders’. Despite most employees having little experience
with the quality system, ISO 9000 created a positive impact on the
employees. One member said, ‘the more I look at it the more I see how it
is going to work; I see that it is beneficial’. Another member stated,
‘eventually it (ISO 9000) will make a positive impact’ on the center.
ISO 9000 was also seen to have a positive impact on the leadership
and administration at the career and technical centers. The focus groups
participants shared the observation that ISO 9000 ‘caused the school
leadership to become distributed rather than top down’. The ISO 9000
standards also were felt to be ‘more efficient on the management side’,
and that the leadership of the school became ‘more aware, and make a lot
of things apparent’. ISO 9000 also made the leaders go through
documentation in order ‘to justify implementing something or changing
something’.
A few of the tangible advantages of ISO 9000 that were seen by the
focus groups were the organisation and timesaving created by IS0 9000
through streamlining tasks and improving the efficiency of the center.
Members reported that ‘our responses to situations are very organised
and this leads to further improvements in other areas’ and ‘we have a
better approach to solving everyday problems’. One teacher pointed out
that ISO 9000 helped with resources, since ‘before we just did it
ourselves’, but now ISO 9000 has ‘made us aware of what we have to do to
maintain our standards’. A cosmetology teacher pointed out that due to
ISO 9000 ‘we updated chemicals and things we really didn’t use. In my lab,
I had to label across the board what was in each closet and for my
students it really helped’. In general, ISO 9000 tended to aid the centers
with organisation: ISO 9000 ‘helped in getting organised and knowing
exactly what to do, what forms to use’. One member of the staff said that
ISO 9000 ‘streamlines people who do similar tasks. As opposed to having
five ways to do the same thing, you have one way of doing it’.
It was also noted that the implementation of ISO 9000 in the CTC
linked and demonstrated the worth of the center to other organisations
and industry. One member expressed the value of this by saying ‘we do a
lot with business and industry so it may be easier to have a conversation
with them if we were using the same management systems, same
terminology, it would make it easier to communicate with them’. Another

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person agreed with him by saying ‘ISO 9000 brings credibility to the
vocational technical education’. An administrator stated:
For what we do and the type of education that we provide, it
gives us the needed link and gives credence to us that we have
close ties to industry. We’re showing academic educators,
school districts that we know what we’re doing. We are on
track with industry and it gives us credence with industry from
an education standpoint. Because if they’ve gone through it
and they see we’ve gone through it and that gives us instant
credibility.
When questioned about how the ISO 9000 implementation process
involved the employees of the center, there were both positive and
negative comments. The centers that were most successful in the
implementation of ISO 9000 stated that ISO 9000 ‘involved people more’
and that they ‘became a team player type thing because everyone was
going for the same objective’. Other focus group participants made
positive comments such as ‘everyone had to step up to the plate’ and
that the ‘organisation pulled together for a common goal’. They agreed
with the fact that having ISO 9000 as their quality system ‘gives the
opportunity for everybody to get involved with the improvement process
at the school or it affords everybody the opportunity’.
The most important factor in the successful implementation of ISO
9000 at the career and technical centers was the quality team, also
referred to as the audit team or the in-house team. All focus group
members reported that the quality team members were ‘very
approachable’ and that ‘our team here has really trained us’. The
members of the quality team are the ones that employees went to if they
had questions or needed help with the ISO 9000 forms. As one secretary
reported, ‘What really helped was my coworker was on the audit team, so
when I have a question, I just talk to the girl at the next desk’. One focus
group expressed that ISO 9000 would not have been possible without the
‘time and energy’ of the quality team. The same theme was expressed in
most of the focus groups, such as ‘our in-house team really helped, they
made it very much non-threatening and relatively painless’.

Weaknesses of ISO 9000 Implementation

The focus group participants at all CTC’s were confused about the
application of ISO 9000 to education. One focus group member reported
that ‘I am confused and curious as to how it (ISO 9000) is going to apply
to education’. Other participants agreed with the statement saying, ‘ISO
9000 is not applicable to us’ and ‘all things you are looking for can’t
always be found in ISO 9000’. At least one person in every focus group

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stated that ‘I understand its (ISO 9000) application in the industry realm
more so than in education’.
Other deterrents of the ISO 9000 implementation were the facts that
the standards are time consuming and paper intensive. Focus group
participants at all of the schools reported that ‘ISO 9000 is work intensive’
and ‘going to take time’. They felt that ISO 9000 ‘requires many meetings
and much documentation’. One focus group member stated that ‘if you
had a third party doing it, which I know has occurred at other schools, it
would not infringe on all of our time’. Most of the teachers were
frustrated at the time spent away from classrooms commenting, ‘more
paperwork, less class time’ and felt like they already had full workloads.
One participant stated, ‘as a secretary, um ... it caused a lot of extra work
for us, it was overwhelming ... but, now I think that it’s great’. Even
members of the administration were frustrated with the time-consuming
element of ISO 9000 as one said that it:
involved people, but that could be construed as negative
because if you look at the initial reaction, the glaring thing that
is showing is that it’s time consuming. In essence, we have jobs
to do and to impose this upon us; it takes us away from our
other tasks.
The focus group participants also stressed the fact that they viewed ISO
9000 as another fad to implement in the school that won’t be finished.
They made comments such as ISO 9000 is ‘one more thing that will be
started and not finished’ and that it was just ‘another labor intensive
program that will come and go’. A few of the schools were very negative
when they expressed comments like ISO 9000 is just ‘another initiative
that doesn’t have much to do with my job as an instructor’ or ‘here we go
reinventing the wheel again’.
One of the biggest problems that the centers faced was the
employee’s lack of information of ISO 9000. The majority of focus group
participants reported feelings of not having enough information about the
definition of the standards or the implementation process. They felt that
not ‘enough people knew what was going on’. One member questioned,
‘Why are teachers the last to know? Information should be shared and not
kept at the top’. Similarly, another person stated, ‘I am still surprised
about how little I know about ISO 9000’. Routinely, when they were asked
about involvement of people in the ISO 9000 principles, the employees
expressed that they felt ‘out of the loop’, ‘in the dark’, and that they
received ‘no clear answers from the administration’.
As stated earlier, there was conflict in the focus groups about the
involvement of people in the ISO 9000 process. In general, the schools
that had the least success or were the slowest in the implementation
process had complaints about lack of personal involvement with ISO
9000. Most of the comments came from teachers or instructors that felt

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left out of the ‘loop’ by the administration that was implementing the
standards. One instructor commented, ‘I am surprised that the teachers
weren’t more involved’ and ‘it would be nice to know what was going on’.
Another teacher stated that they had received ‘one in-service day and
that was it ... two or three years ago’. There also seemed to be hostility
about the lack of involvement as was evident by one comment from a
culinary arts instructor who said ISO 9000 is being ‘shoved down my
throat and I don’t even know what it is’.
A final major deterrent for the implementation process of ISO 9000
in the career and technical centers was the difficulty understanding and
applying the language of ISO 9000 to the educational setting. Participants
were frustrated with translating and attempting to understand who are
the customers? What is the product? Who are the suppliers? They had
feelings such as ‘It gets frustrating trying to look at the procedures and
trying to implement them’ and also said ‘the terminology needs to be
matched to what our language is. What we know and what we talk each
and every day is not the terminology that ISO 9000 uses and it causes
mass confusion’.

Comparison of Centers
Another vital aspect in the research findings can be observed through the
comparison of the most successful and least successful centers in the
implementation process of ISO 9000. Comparing a success with a failure
may provide data that can be applied to other situations about what will
lead to a successful implementation of ISO 9000 or what type of a career
and technical center should implement ISO 9000. For reasons of
confidentiality, the most successful school will be referred to as Center A
and the least successful as Center B.
First, general observations can be made about the behavior of the
focus groups at each center. It is important to note that the focus groups
contained a similar proportion of people; each contained only one
member of administration and at least one member of the quality team.
The remaining members of the groups were secretaries and instructors
with a variety of backgrounds.
At Center A, the focus group was open and friendly, there was
comradeship within the group and there was often laughter during the
discussion. Although a member of administration was present, neither
the group nor the administrator showed signs of tension while expressing
opinions or feelings about the implementation process of ISO 9000. Also,
there seemed to be no sign of a struggle between the administration and
the other employees. Although Center A expressed feelings of ISO 9000
such as being overwhelmed or that ISO 9000 was time consuming, they
were very positive about the results and also described ISO 9000 as
organised, systematic, fair and revealing. The group viewed

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standardisation as positive for the school, making them all ‘go in the
same line’. The focus group at Center A was pleased with the outcome of
ISO 9000 in their school, and attributed the success to the quality team
effort and devotion, also stating that since no member of administration
had been on the team this had caused less stress during the process and
more devotion by the other employees of the school. All the focus group
members felt well informed and involved in the process, and therefore
were more apt to support the implementation and all of the requirements.
In contrast, the focus group at Center B was very quiet and even
hostile toward the research team at the beginning of the discussion. They
were upset about having to be involved in the discussion group since
they did not feel very involved in the ISO 9000 process. The group
described ISO 9000 as painful, lengthy, unknown, confusing, an
imposition, time consuming and mandatory. The group was also
concerned about standardising too much in the school such as forms of
instruction. Throughout the course of the discussion, the tension
between the employees and the administrator was very visible, and often
the group attacked the actions of the administration leaving the
administrator to defend himself or other leaders at the center. The
administrator was also very defensive about the leadership’s decision to
implement ISO 9000 even though they had not involved the employees at
that point in time. Most of the employees were not aware of ISO 9000
being implemented at the center and did not have much knowledge of the
ISO 9000 standards. There was also very little mention of the quality team
except from the one member of the group involved in the team. One of
the most important points of the discussion was that the group identified
the center’s problem as a lack of communication at all levels; not only
isolated to the implementation process of ISO 9000. At this point in time,
even after 3 years in the process, the ISO 9000 implementation has not
reached the instructors and most of the staff, but is still at the top levels
of management. Therefore, this center was viewed as unsuccessful in the
implementation process of ISO 9000.
Important factors for the successful implementation of ISO 9000
according to Goetsch & Davis (2002) are to have commitment to the ISO
9000 registration from the highest level of management since only
management controls the necessary resources, only management can
overcome resistance to change and management needs to set an example
to the rest of the staff during the implementation process. Goetsch &
Davis also note that an important aspect is to have an informed team and
staff about the ISO 9000 process. These same factors can be viewed in
section 4.1.1 of the ANSI/ISO/ASQC Q9001 Standards for Education and
Training, as it is management’s responsibility to document its quality
policy and make sure that it is understood, implemented and maintained
by the entire organisation. These factors are supported in this
comparison of Centers A and B. A few of the major factors contributing to

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the success of ISO 9000 implementation are communication and support

of administration, involvement of the employees and a devoted quality
team.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Due to the new legislative requirements in the USA federal government,
many vocational education providers have turned to the quality
management system of ISO 9000 in order to establish consistency and
control over the quality of vocational education.
The ISO 9000 standards have tended to be successful in the
manufacturing and service industries, and standards for education have
been specifically published in Europe and the United States, but their
application to education is relatively new. The current literature available
about ISO 9000 in education shows that there are positive and negative
aspects to implementing the standards in vocational education
institutions. This study obtained qualitative data from nine focus groups
at career and technical centers in Pennsylvania that identified important
strengths and weaknesses of the implementation of ISO 9000.
The strengths for implementing ISO 9000 acknowledged by the focus
groups at each center include the following:
• a beneficial future for the center;
• improving the leadership of the center;
• improving the efficiency of the center;
• time savings and organisation;
• linking the center to other organisations and industry;
• the quality team, and
• increasing the involvement of people.
These results are consistent with the benefits of ISO implementation in
European schools discussed by Van den Berge (1997) such as an increase
in the consistency of operations, improvements in efficiency,
improvements in product quality, increase in employee awareness of the
quality systems and procedures.
The weaknesses for implementing ISO 9000 recognised by the focus
groups conducted at the centers include the following:
• it is difficult to apply the ISO 9000 standards to education;
• the process is time consuming and paper intensive;
• ISO 9000 is viewed as one more quality fad that will soon be forgotten;
• there is a lack of information about ISO 9000 and implementation
process within the school;
• there is no personal involvement in the process;
• there are difficulties with understanding the language and terms of the
standards.

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These weaknesses are also supported by the problems and disadvantages

discovered by Van den Berge (1997) for the implementation of ISO 9000,
which consist of interpretation and relevance problems of the standards
in education, time consumption, lack of guidance and the high level of
paperwork.
This data offers very important implications for practice since it has been
generated from employees at CTC who have been personally involved
with the implementation process. These strengths and weaknesses for
ISO 9000 implementation may inform CTC administration, government
and other educational institutions, during the implementation of the ISO
9000 quality system. The comparison of two centers in the
implementation process of ISO 9000 provided in the study also will inform
administration of the necessary support and resources that they need to
provide if they decide to implement ISO 9000 as a new system, as well as
problems they may face due to communication challenges within the
school.
The research findings collected in the focus groups are a valuable
beginning to the study of ISO 9000 as a quality system for vocational
education. While ISO 9000 seems to offer benefits such as streamlining
operations and drawing schools closer to industry, there are limitations
including the time-consuming, confusing and expensive process of
implementation. Future research is needed to identify factors that result
in successful ISO 9000 implementation, for example, the size of school,
previous quality systems, current quality culture and the management
commitment to ISO 9000. We also recommend research on the long-term
results of utilising market-driven tools for education quality and other
quality models that may be more appropriate for educational institutions.

Correspondence
Theresa L. Bevans-Gonzales, Pennsylvania State University, Keller
Building 0301, University Park, PA 16802, USA (tlb933@psu.edu).

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