Standards and Standardization Practice

Technical standards have always played a vital role in the development of industrial society. Historically, standards can be traced to origins in the invention of currency and in early human activities such as warfare, trade and printing—in societies as diverse as ancient China and Rome. For example, Venetian war galleys were mass produced: the size, fittings, ropes and even oars were all standardized and interchangeable (Cargill, 1997, p. 18). Throughout history, standardization evolved as a social practice and it tends to reflect the particular political and economic cultures involved.

Conclusion

This chapter offers the conclusions of the study, briefly summarizes the entire study, and then presents the results and their relevance to the study’s theoretical perspectives. Recommendations are also provided about how the discourse on standardization might be clarified and employed more fruitfully by those exploring policy alternatives, including academia, government, and industry. The limitations of the study are assessed and some suggestions are made about possible areas for further research, both theoretical and practical. Finally, observations are included that relate this work to the larger context of global economic, political, and social change.

Situated Discourse and Essential Terms

The research for this work is based on the thesis that standardization is moving from public formal bodies to more private consortia. A relevant question is why? Another basic question is what do these key words mean? In any case, the approach taken in this study is analysis of historical and current discourses about standardization from the perspective of a separate discourse about privatization, the enclosure discourse. The latter discourse was examined in the previous chapters to establish a perspective for analysis. This chapter seeks to identify the essential terms of the discourse of standards and standardization and to establish meanings. First, however, it is useful to briefly note the way in which much of the current standards discourse is situated and how it has been researched.

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

The primary theoretical perspective and framework of analysis for this study are public sphere theory and political economy. Although standardization is a social practice that springs from tradition and not from any theoretical grounding, it is situated and institutionalized in a public but non-governmental setting that could be seen as a public sphere as described by Habermas (1962). Public sphere theory provides a focus on publicness and the discursive process that are relevant for analyzing and understanding standardization practice. Political economy provides an approach to understanding the various interests being served by the social practices that are relevant to this study, and to the underlying reasons for their establishment.

The Global Context of Standardization

The purpose of this chapter is to situate this study in a global economic and social context, and to review the literature and discourses that inform this study and identify its objects of analysis. The discourse on enclosure, including its key concepts, is examined in some detail. The study is couched in an immediate discursive context and then in a greater economic, social, and historical context. The discourse on standards and standardization is briefly surveyed here, but a detailed analysis is left for later discussion in Chapter VII. The key relevant discourses are examined. Related and useful discourses on social construction of technology and on institutionalization are also examined.

Discourse on Standardization

The preceding chapter examined the history, structure, and practices of the principal international standards-setting organizations, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with particular attention to their composition, the public/private nature of their organizations, the interests they serve, and their processes. The present chapter will examine current discourse on standardization and the rise of the consortia movement. It will do so first by framing the debate within general structural and openness issues and then by looking at specific rhetorical examples of arguments, claims, and controversies. It will then establish a taxonomy of arguments and rhetorical discourses, focusing on the issue of legitimation of consortia standardization. It will next analyze several important cases, looking at public documents, testimony, and reports. In doing so, it will examine the specific claims to legitimacy made by consortia and traditional bodies. It will seek to clarify how the practice of standardization is being discursively re-constructed. Finally it will consider international, institutional, and industrial responses to these claims of legitimacy and to the political/economic pressures they have brought.

Traditional Institutional Structures and Practices

In order to understand how traditional processes and discursive spaces may be undergoing enclosure, it is useful to examine the baseline from which recent changes have taken place. In other words, it is important to ask, How open were these standards-setting institutions and their practices in the past? This is not an easy question to answer. The diversity among various institutions is considerable. Even the question, What institutions should we be talking about? is not easy to answer. A detailed historical account, analysis, and comparison of standardization bodies is beyond the scope of this study, but the three oldest and most established international standards-setting organizations , the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and International Organization for Standardization (ISO), have been selected here because they are stable, they are respected, and their authority and legitimacy are well established. These organizations were mentioned briefly in an earlier chapter, as part of an historical overview of the global standardization system. They will now be examined in more detail.

Introduction to the Study

This book is a study of the process of standardization—the process of establishing the technical standards that define nearly every artifact of the modern world. In the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)1 such standards are documents that specify everything from the prongs on plugs and cables to the software protocols that make the Internet work. Technical standards and standardization play a vital role in trade and commerce, and increasingly in economic and cultural globalization. The aim of this study was to setup a research project to explore the discourse around standardization and to analyze it to provide a better understanding of the underlying issues.