Development of co-operation-based company standards: The case of innovative practice in public service companies

Abstract

“I don’t like standards”-we have heard this statement from all kinds of managers-experienced or beginners, domestic or multinationals, from large or small companies, production or service oriented. Much of the negative attitude that managers have towards standardization is based on their experience with ISO 9001 and the organizational work standardization and the problems with “over routined” documented quality management systems. The negative attitudes towards standards are predominantly based on the lack of understanding about how much freedom an organization has in order to find its own successful way to fulfill ISO 9001 requirements and the forced implementation of ISO 9001. The research related to ISO 9001 and other standardized implementations of management systems show that the benefits are predicated on efforts well beyond the minimum requirements of the standards (Gotzamani, 2005) and encompass other approaches, initiatives, and tools (Mijatović and Stokić, 2010). On the other side, innovation and standardization are often considered as mutually exclusive for corporate management because the remaining space for innovative work is reduced along with the progress in work standardization-many cases confirm that they are complementary to each other (Kondo, 2000).