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Routledge · Productivity Press

AI Management System Certification According to the ISO/IEC 42001 Standard

How to Audit, Certify, and Build Responsible AI Systems

The first practical guide to certification under the ISO/IEC 42001 standard, written from inside the standards process for the auditors, compliance leaders, and executives responsible for making AI governance real.

Written from inside the drafting room. The author has sat on the U.S. ISO working group behind ISO/IEC 42001 since 2018, and the book reflects what the committee intended each clause to require — not a reading of the published text from the outside.

Publisher
Routledge · Productivity Press
Published
June 2024 · 1st edition
Extent
226 pages · 29 illustrations
Formats
Hardcover · Paperback · Kindle
ISBN
978-1-032-73394-4
Buy on Amazon
01

What is inside

Part One — Why AI needed a management standard

The case for governing AI as a management system rather than a technical problem: what the technology changed, what it is doing to organizations, and why the usual controls stopped being sufficient.

  1. 01Artificial Intelligence: A Transformational Technology
  2. 02Generative AI: A “Spark from AGI”
  3. 03Economic Impact of Artificial Intelligence
  4. 04Digital Transformation: How to Prepare Your Organization for Change

Part Two — The standard, clause by clause

The working half of the book. One chapter per clause of ISO/IEC 42001, covering what the clause requires, what an auditor will ask to see, and how to build the evidence before the audit rather than during it.

  1. 05Clause 4: Context of the Organization
  2. 06Clause 5: Leadership
  3. 07Clause 6: Planning
  4. 08Clause 7: Support
  5. 09Clause 8: Operation
  6. 10Clause 9: Performance Evaluation
  7. 11Clause 10: Improvement
02

Who it is for

Auditors and lead assessors

The clause-by-clause treatment is written around what conformity looks like in evidence, which is the question an audit actually turns on.

Compliance and risk leaders

For the person who has to stand up an AI management system and keep it running between audits, not just document one.

Executives and boards

Clause 5 puts accountability at the top. Part One is the argument to make to a leadership team that has not yet accepted that.

Consultants and implementers

The structure follows the standard, so the book doubles as an implementation sequence for client work.

03

Before you buy

Does the book go through the standard clause by clause?
Yes. Part Two dedicates one chapter to each of clauses 4 through 10 — context, leadership, planning, support, operation, performance evaluation, and improvement. That is the bulk of the book.
Do I still need to buy the standard itself?
Yes. ISO/IEC 42001 is copyrighted and sold by ISO and national standards bodies, so no book can reproduce it. This one is a companion: it explains what the requirements mean and what satisfying them looks like in practice.
Is it a technical book? Do I need a machine learning background?
No. It is written for the people accountable for AI governance — auditors, compliance leads, executives — rather than for the engineers building models. There is no code in it.
We already hold ISO/IEC 27001. Does that get us most of the way?
It helps with the management-system mechanics, and 42001 deliberately mirrors the same high-level structure. But the subject matter is different: fairness, transparency, human oversight, impact on people, and model behavior over time have no equivalent in an information security management system.
Is it useful before we start certification, or only during the audit?
Before. Most of the value is in the preparation — deciding scope, building the risk and impact registers, and establishing oversight — all of which is far cheaper to get right ahead of a Stage 1 audit than to repair after one.
Does it cover the EU AI Act and other regulation?
Yes. Alongside the standard itself, the book covers how to read the EU AI Act and its conformity assessment requirement, and touches on U.S. legislation such as New York City Local Law 144. The connective tissue is the point: certification under 42001 is how many organizations will demonstrate what regulators are starting to require.
Where can I buy it?
From Routledge directly, from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle, and through the usual academic and professional booksellers.
04

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