Factors influencing Turkish textile companies' satisfaction with ISO 9000

Using data collected from a sample of 43 ISO- certified Turkish textile companies, we explore the influence of various factors on textile companies' satisfaction with ISO 9000. This is the first attempt to examine the relationships between textile companies' demographic characteristics, difficulties encountered in ISO 9000 implementation, improvements generated after attaining ISO 9000 and textile companies' satisfaction with ISO 9000. The results suggest that textile companies may be more satisfied with ISO 9000 through increased emphasis on making operational improvements. In particular, they should focus on increasing product quality, reducing error/ defect rate in production and increasing overseas market share. They should also focus on considering alternative approaches to educating the top and medium level managers and gathering information from previously certified companies. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings resulting in developing a model predicting textile companies' satisfaction with ISO 9000 and recommendations for future research areas.