Research and Statistical Methods for Business

Determinants of the adoption of ISO9000 and its impact on firm performance

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 interest in understanding the determinants of adoption of ISO 9000, and the impact of the adoption of ISO 9000 on firm financial performance (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

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.

Attachment:- Assignment dataset.rar