ISO 14000 in the concept of total quality management and comparison of its application in two countries

ABSTRACTMaster Program with Thesis OptionISO 14000 as Total Quality Management and Comparison of its Applications inTwo CountriesNida Noorani kizDokuz Eylul UniversityInstitute of Social SciencesDepartment of ManagementInternational Organization of Standards (ISO), released ISO 14000 (TotalQuality Environmental Standards) in order to substain economicaldevelopment and remove trade barriers among countries. Recently, manyinternational organizations investigate the needs of ISO 14000 which willprovide them lots of advantages in the marketplace.Although we are in the 21st century, quite many organizations adoptTotal Quality and Environmental Management Systems to theirselves just forcommercial benefits. We can not expect from such kind of firms andorganizations to maintain sustainability and success over long term periods.The main point of this study is to define Total Quality EnvironmentalManagement Standards (ISO 14000) and to explain the benefits of theorganizations which are applying them efficiently. This study also presentshow Total Quality Management and Environmental Management Systemintegrates together and how simple it is to adopt Environmental ManagementSystem to the organizations which are applying Total Quality to theirselves.After that, the requirements of adoptation and application of ISO 14000 weredefined throughout this dissertation. Finally, a survey was applied to a total of70 ISO 14000 members (35 of them from Turkey and 35 of them from UnitedStates ). The effects of the standards to their successes were compared andevaluated by using SPSS Software Program. Results summarize thatcompanies of United States have been adopting and improving ISO 14000Standards more effectively compared to Turkey. This may be due to reason ofeconomic advantages and the standards have been adopted to US for a longerperiod compared to Turkey.