Multi-mode standardisation: A critical review and a research agenda

Paul Moritz Wiegmann, Henk J. de Vries and Knut Blind

Research Policy, 2017, vol. 46, issue 8, 1370-1386

Abstract: Standardisation is key to shaping new technologies and supporting major ongoing trends, such as the increased importance of platforms, developing ‘smart’ technologies and innovating large-scale complex systems. Standardisation plays a key role in shaping the rules that govern these developments and their effects on society. Due to the large variety of actors involved in these trends, the associated standardisation processes are likely to involve all three modes of standardisation identified in the literature: committee-based, market-based and government-based. This multi-mode standardisation challenges the theoretical views on standardisation which predominantly focus on one of the modes. In this paper, we review the existing literatures on individual modes and on multi-mode standardisation. By recombining existing evidence, we generate new insights into multi-mode standardisation processes. These first insights relate to the contributions that each mode can make to such processes’ outcomes and suggest that their impact depends on factors, such as their initiation’s timing and the institutional context in which the standardisation process occurs. Moreover, we consider the conditions under which actors can launch each mode. Based on our observations, we formulate an agenda for future research to obtain a better understanding of multi-mode standardisation. We offer recommendations for industry actors, NGOs, researchers and policy makers involved in shaping technological and societal change.

Keywords: Standardization; Committee-based standardization; Standard battles; Regulation; Government-based standardization; Multi-mode standardization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733317301002
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:46:y:2017:i:8:p:1370-1386

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2017.06.002

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().