Valuation of the option of abandoning ISO 9001 certification: an empirical study in Spain

The main objective of the present work is to provide a tool that facilitates the valuation of the existing option in any business with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 certification to be able to abandon it if deemed appropriate. By comparing the value of the business under the assumption of whether or not it has implemented the ISO 9001 quality system, a first approximation of the value that this certification benefits the business has been obtained. However, the value thus obtained does not present operational flexibility that permits management to give up the certification. To assess this abandonment option, fuzzy real options were used. This tool is validated with an empirical study in Spain. The proposed methodology is applied at 13 small companies belonging to the same sector. Furthermore, their behaviour in the context of the current Spanish economic crisis is analysed.