FIRMS CONFRONTED WITH MARKET STANDARDS - THE PARADOX OF NEW MANAGEMENT STANDARDS IN INDUSTRY

Firms are being confronted with a new type of international standard, for management and quality assurance, in order to promote in these org anizations standardized forms of management and coordination, appropri ate for greater reliability in inter-industrial exchanges. This observ ation illustrates the ambivalence of this tool: when used to develop t he capacity equivalence of enterprises on the: market, it also contrib utes to a differentiation between firms. This fact makes it necessary to take a different approach as regards the specificity of the procedu res used and the way in which they are applied - each time, training i s required relative to the: number of workers in the firm. Thus standa rdizing quality also appears as a symbolic representation of what is t o be expected from the opening up of markets: instead of jeopardizing local legislation, opening up markets world-wide in reality will only make local legislation mom decisive.