How to conceptually harmonize ISO 9000 certification, levels of excellence recognition and real improvement

ISO 9000 certification has certainly hit high quantitative targets but it came short of qualitative expectations. Will the new ISO 9000:2000 standards help restore its image? The probability is low, unless some substantial changes are made. In fact, the higher TQM content of the new standards makes the task even harder. If nothing changes, certification reliability will decrease and so will trust. The risk exists for quality certification to become more a kind of bureaucratic requirement by public administrations than a widespread request in B2B relations. On the other hand, awards too have lost their allure and, to improve participation, intermediate recognition levels have been conceived (`Levels of Excellence', according to EFQM). The paper is rather critical in relation to an extended use of the word `excellence' beyond its semantic limits. In relation to the existing problems affecting certification and lack of clear definition of the respective roles of ISO Certification and the new `Levels' scheme, the paper suggests a different approach to certification allowing for more precise recognition of quality ranges, from insufficient to sufficient to good to outstanding. The suggestion is also made to harmonize the ISO 9001 Certification and Award assessment approaches, even if they cannot become identical, since the first relates to the product/service generation subsystem only while the latter relates to the whole company system. Submitting that TQM strategies deal mostly with differentiation, a new and original view on how to reconcile standardization and differentiation within organizations is presented.