Certification without any ethical content is, as far as I am concerned, meaningless unless it is proof of the fact that the company can adapt to standards. The companies in eastern Europe were able to do this admirably up to their collapse in 1989. If the standard fails to have an ethical component, aircraft can still crash and "Chernobyl" can be repeated (Küng). It is necessary for people to realise that technology has an element of risk. Responsible people, however, can get the risk under control and are not destined to do nothing, as many politicians would have as believe.

The smaller a company is, the less is its complexity, in principle. And the risk that wrong decisions are made is also less. Why then should I push a small company into the ISO 9000 series? How can I draw up an organigram in a four-man company? It can only be performed if staff have several functions and other liberties are taken.

If we think about this and training, then we can save ourselves a lot of talk about (and fear of) the ISO 9000 series, which describes business administration as it should be conducted anyway.

Back in 1978 the booklet was published "What's Wrong with Britain?". This book, published at the end of the socialist era of planned economy, talks about a lot of macroeconomics and microeconomics. At the end it infers that it is the people and their values which make the difference between mediocrity and high quality. Good people, good management, setting a good example: that is the key to quality. That is built-in reliability.