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The ISO 9000 standard for quality management systems was accepted by the International Organisation for Standardisation in 1987. Since then, large companies and SMEs have been obliged to open their doors to something new, “the culture of quality”, a message that is very often associated with the initials of this well‐known standard. Currently, there are more than 6,000 companies with this certificate in Spain, but they have not always obtained the same results. This paper gives the results of empirical research into 502 Spanish companies to determine the benefits of the implementation of this standard. By means of cluster analysis it was found that different typologies of companies exist. Also, nearly 65 per cent of the companies certified in Spain have obtained substantial internal and external benefits.
́s et al. (2001) studied this question.