Organizational practices attend to diffuse unevenly throughout the world.

Organizational practices attend to diffuse unevenly throughout the world. Using comparative case studies of a small number of countries, researchers have rest that national institutions shape processe of diffusion above and beyond the technical characteristics or efficiency of the practice (Cole 1985 1989; Gooderham, Nordhaug, and Ringdal, 1999; Guillen, 1994a; Orru, Biggart, and Hamilton, 1991) These differences in the rates of international diffusion of organizational practices have not been conceptually and empirically examined for a sufficiently large number of countries in order to understand the drivers of diffusion upon a truly global scale.

The question of by what means practices travel from one organization or social setting to another has already been of interest to a variety of fields in the social sciences, the life sciences, and engineering (see Roger 1995 for a review) and, with the intensification of globalization has become uniform more urgent to answer (Guillen, 2001; Meyer Boli, and Ramirez, 1997) any researchers have focused on the technical merits of the practice or innovation in accounting for diffusion (eg Mansfield, 1961; Williamson, 1970; Davies, 1979) while others have examined the existence of institutional validitys on the diffusion of practices in single industries, fields, sectors, or countries, usually the United States (eg Baron, Dobbin, and Jennings, 1986; Galaskiewicz and Wasserman, 1989; Davis, 1991; Galaskiewicz and Burt 1991; Haunschild, 1993; Haveman, 1993; Davis and Greve 1997) This line of research has established that practices spread from common organization to another following a proces of institutionalization dri ven from resource dependence, social comparison, or network ties linking potential adopters, however most work has not focused onward diffusion to different organizations across countries.

Previous research has paid attention to the consequences of national institutions and forces forward the process of diffusion of certain organizational practices within countries (eg Kieser, 1989; Barley and Kunda, 1992; Lazerson, 1995; Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999) on the contrary neoinstitutional theorists have explicitly argued that isomorphism arises at the country level of analysis as well as at the horizontal of the organizational field or the industry (Jepperson and Meyer 1991; Orru, Biggart, and Hamilton, 1991; Rosenzweig and Singh, 1991; Kostova, 1999) A scarcely any researchers have more specifically considered the institutional factors that shape the cross-national diffusion of practices, focusing upon state structures, professionalization, and agriculture as explanations (e.g., Guillen, 1994a, 1997; Meyer et al., 1997; Westney, 1987)

chiefly empirical research on cross-national diffusion falls beneath two rather restrictive categories. The first comprises comparative studies based upon a limited number of countries, including Cole's (1985 1989) analysis of the diffusion of small-group activities in Japan, Sweden, and the United States; Gooderham, Nordhaug, and Ringdal's (1999) comparison of the adoption of human resource management practices on firms in six European countries; and Casper and Hancke's (1999) subject of attention of the implementation of quality management practices by way of automobile firms in France and Germany. The inferior category of empirical research upon cross-national diffusion includes studies based forward evidence drawn from a large number of countries, on the contrary dealing with practices adopted on governments or nation-states as oppos to by dint of organizations or firms. For instance, cross-national processe of institutional isomorphism have been empirically documented in the cases of the spread of oil nationalizations (Kobrin, 1985) decolonization (Strang, 1990) circulation crises (Glick and Rose, 1999) and policies to defend the environment (Frank, Hironaka, and Schofer 2000) The empirical literature does not contain analyses of diffusion of an organizational practice among firms located in a large number of countries, equal though such diffusion is likely to be a powerful force in a globalized economy. Moreover, the literature in succession cross-national diffusion has made self-same limited progress in terms of specifying the institutional mechanisms that facilitate or impede acceptance of a given organizational practice internationally. In this paper, we fill this gap as we identify, conceptualize, measure, and proof the effects of the institutional forces that generate isomorphic behavior among firms located in different countries. We provide the first empirical example of the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice (ISO 9000 quality certification) based upon 85 countries over a six-year period.

THE DIFFUSION OF ISO 9000 QUALITY CERTIFICATION

Quality certification has emerg as a tonic organizational practice helping companies worldwide establish rationalized production processe As of the like kind it provides an appropriate empirical setting for the research of the cross-national diffusion of organizational practices. The most numerous influential and pervasive quality practice in the world is associated with the 9000 family of certificates sponsored at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), based in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO's goal is to "promote the disclosure of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating international exchange of propers and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity" (ISO, 2001a). To understand the diffusion of ISO standards, more [i]or[/i] less background information is necessary.