Résumé
The practical problem standing at the basis of our reflexion is the paradox between on the one hand the slow and minutious building of the text of the Iso 9000 version 2000 certification so as to be able to apply it easily to all types of activities and organizations, and on the other hand, the practical necessity to take time and financial means to apply tis certification, although it is reputed as generic within the organizations, which witnesses a necessity of adapting the Iso 9000 version 2000 in companies trying to obtain this certification. The method chosen consists in considering the certification in a two-dimensional way : – First as a text, since it is originally a mental construction established by experts in commissions. It can thus be profitably seen under the cognitive aspect as a representation. – Then as a tool of management and improvement, for it is part of the whole of managing tools used by businesse to ensure their development. There remains a part of uncertainty about the exact role of the certification. Built in order to give homogeneous sets or groups and thus to make comparisons, it aims at giving the organizations the possibility to escape some contingencies, especially behavioral ones, in time or space.It consequently requires setting, congealing the organization, an entity in constant evolution. We thus paradoxically need to permanently adapt the certification for it forcedly is unappliable and translate it for it is too abstract.This implies the presence of a quality manager and his theoretically inevitable role as a mediator-translator.