Topic: Adoption ofISO9000 and its Relationship with other Factors in China's Service Industry

Background

The ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standard has been widely applied all over the world since its introduction in 1987. By the end of 2013, ISO 9000 had been adopted by over 1,129,000 facilities in 189 countries. Both academics and practitioners are interested in understanding the relationship between adoption of ISO 9000, and other factors(Christmann & Taylor, 2006; Du, Yin, & Zhang, 2016; Fikru, 2014a, 2014b, 2016; Nakamura, Takahashi, & Vertinsky, 2001; Pekovic, 2010; Wu, Chu, & Liu, 2007).

Dataset

In 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics of China conducted an Economic Census of the service firms. The descriptions of variables, and coding are shown in the table. The data is available in Moodle.

Variables, their descriptions and coding

No	Variable	Description of the variable	Coding
1	YoCertification	Year the company certified	2004; 2005; 2006; 2007; 2008
2	Certification	Certification dummy	0= not certified; 1=certified
3	YoFounding	Year of the founding of the company
4	EmployeeTotal	Employee number
5	EmployeePost	Number of employees with master or doctor
6	EmployeeUnder	Number of employees with bachelor
7	EmployeeDip	Number of employees with diploma
8	EmployeeOth	Number of employees with high school education or lower
9	Profit	Profit of the company
10	Sales	Sales of the company
11	Asset	Asset of the company
12	Equity	Equity of the company
13	Capital	Total capital
14	CapitalState	Capital from government
15	CapitalOversea	Capital from overseas
16	CapitalOther	Capital from other sources
17	ROS	Return on sales
18	ROA	Return on assets
19	FDIpercent	Percentage of overseas investment in the total investment
20	FDI	Overseas investment dummy	0=without; 1=with
21	AoFirm	Age of the company	In years

Topic:Adoption ofISO9000 and its relationship with other factors in China's service industry

Materials for assignment 2

• Background information and the variables in dataset (word document in Moodle)
• The dataset (excel file in Moodle)

Suggested time to devote to this task

Submission of assignment 2:

Marking Guide:See section 2 of this document

Task assessor: Lecturer

Details of the assignment

Groups will be limited to a maximum of three members. Peer assessment may be undertaken in this course. It will be the responsibility of all group members to produce a quality report. Hence, if there are group problems and you need to discuss such a situation with your lecturer, act on that on time.

Written report

This assessment involves reading and analysing a dataset to develop a research report. Working in groups, you are to design a research project. This will include using academic sources to review the relevant literature, conducting analyses, and advising the management based on the findings of the research. More specific requirements for the assignment will be discussed in lectures. You will need to apply the Excel (or SPSS) data analysis techniques for your group assignment. Some lecture time will also be allocated to the group project so that your lecturer can provide direction/make suggestions.

Report Structure: The group project should have the following:

Abstract:Purpose (research questions), method to answer the research questions (data collection and data analysis), findings, practical implications (usefulness for management) and (or) theoretical implications, and the limitations of the research,

Introduction: Background (of the case); purpose (of this report); two to three research objectives for a study that you would seek to conduct (of this report).

Literature review: short literature review of at least six academic sources relevant to your topic. Any sources including books, journal articles are acceptable, as long as they are relevant. You can also use a particular website for some information. If websites are used, they will be in addition of the six academic sources.

Methodology: Describe the methodology and justify your choice. Specifically describe about the measures, sampling method, procedure of data collection.

Analyses and findings: Run some analysis to turn the data into useful information as following.

• Descriptive statistics: Sample characteristics will be described with descriptive analysis. This will include at least the following analysis: Frequency, percentage; Measures of central tendency (means, median, mode); Measures of dispersion (variance, standard deviation).
• Inferential statistics: Inferential statistics will be used to analyse relationship between variables. This will include at least the following analysis (Pearson's r, t test, ANOVA test).

Discussion and managerial advice: linking your findings to extant literature. Advise the management about the usefulness of the findings. Limitations and directions for future research. Suggestions of how the research can be improved.

Equity in Teams

YoCertification	Certification	YoFounding	EmployeeTotal	EmployeePost	EmployeeUnder	EmployeeDip	EmployeeOth	Sales	Asset	Equity	Capital	CapitalState	CapitalOversea	CapitalOther	ROS	ROA	FDIpercent	FDI	AoFirm	Profit
	0	2006	12	0	2	2	8	1726	2933	312	10	0	0	10	0.10	0.06	0.00	0	2	172
	0	2006	17	0	2	9	6	1260	1500	65	50	0	0	50	0.13	0.11	0.00	0	2	167
	0	2006	13	0	4	4	5	1700	1966	145	100	0	0	100	0.16	0.14	0.00	0	2	266
	0	2006	17	0	11	6	0	4520	4440	110	100	0	0	100	0.20	0.21	0.00	0	2	912
	0	2006	16	0	0	1	15	4522	2604	150	150	0	0	150	0.09	0.16	0.00	0	2	410
	0	2006	23	0	0	1	22	1730	1500	200	200	0	0	200	0.14	0.16	0.00	0	2	241
	0	2006	15	0	0	5	10	6467	4590	200	200	0	0	200	0.15	0.21	0.00	0	2	955
	0	2006	12	2	8	2	0	5920	4820	200	200	0	0	200	0.31	0.39	0.00	0	2	1863
	0	2006	17	0	0	4	13	2684	1250	210	210	0	0	210	0.21	0.45	0.00	0	2	564
	0	2006	13	1	3	3	6	1100	1100	250	250	0	0	250	0.49	0.49	0.00	0	2	540
	0	2006	12	1	2	8	1	5438	3940	700	300	0	0	300	0.15	0.20	0.00	0	2	790
	0	2006	15	0	0	5	10	1804	1300	1114	300	0	0	300	0.29	0.40	0.00	0	2	522
	0	2006	16	0	3	13	0	1857	1033	922	300	0	0	300	0.26	0.47	0.00	0	2	482
	0	2006	20	0	2	2	16	1531	3000	523	400	0	0	400	0.04	0.02	0.00	0	2	55
	0	2006	15	0	0	1	14	2464	1387	880	460	0	0	460	0.08	0.14	0.00	0	2	194
	0	2006	26	0	2	18	6	5154	2210	550	480	0	0	480	0.21	0.50	0.00	0	2	1104
	0	2006	15	0	6	4	5	5356	2852	512	500	0	0	500	0.02	0.04	0.00	0	2	124
	0	2006	13	0	2	6	5	9807	4651	1030	500	0	0	500	0.02	0.04	0.00	0	2	208
	0	2006	11	1	0	10	0	1155	1524	500	500	0	0	500	0.06	0.05	0.00	0	2	69
	0	2006	32	0	2	5	25	1409	1409	500	500	0	0	500	0.05	0.05	0.00	0	2	67
	0	2006	62	0	0	6	56	1865	1161	500	500	0	0	500	0.05	0.08	0.00	0	2	95
	0	2006	22	0	2	4	16	1972	1063	576	500	0	0	500	0.09	0.16	0.00	0	2	169
	0	2006	16	0	10	6	0	6249	4364	2268	500	0	0	500	0.12	0.18	0.00	0	2	767
	0	2006	14	0	10	3	1	4435	4961	500	500	0	0	500	0.20	0.18	0.00	0	2	905
	0	2006	29	2	20	4	3	8243	1477	498	500	0	0	500	0.04	0.22	0.00	0	2	325
	0	2006	32	0	1	5	26	2450	1500	500	500	0	0	500	0.16	0.27	0.00	0	2	402
	0	2006	16	0	1	3	12	5580	5000	500	500	0	0	500	0.27	0.30	0.00	0	2	1514