Somewhat incongruously, at the same time that private standardization was both promoting economic globalization and becoming more global, social activists concerned with the impact of globalization on the environment, on workers, and on human rights began to look to ISOās experience with management system standards as a model of how to prevent a globalization-led race to the bottom. For the activists, ISO 9000 provided a governance model for organizations concerned with social and environmental sustainability, one that actually promised their continuous improvement across the global economy. The relevant feature of the model had also helped make ISO 9000 certification such a successful business: as part of the ācontinuous improve-mentā that the standards demanded, ISO 9000-certified companies were expected increasingly to buy their supplies from companies that also had quality management systems in place. Adherence to this principle helped the standard spread.37 British historian Deborah Cadbury points to a precedent for this hoped-for contagious spread of higher standards in the unusual success of nineteenth-century British and American Quaker manufacturers.
They followed the highest social standards of the day in their own firms, demanded similar standards of their distributors and global suppliers, and were held accountable by an active popular press eager to point out any hypocrisy on the part of these āaustere men of Godā who influenced āthe course of the Industrial Revolution and the [pre-Thatcher-era] commercial world.ā
JoAnne Yates & Craig N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (2019) (citing Deborah Cadbury, Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry between the Worldās Greatest Chocolate Makers at xii (2010)).
Interesting excerpt from a book Iām reading:
JoAnne Yates & Craig N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (2019) (citing Deborah Cadbury, Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry between the Worldās Greatest Chocolate Makers at xii (2010)).