Standard development by committees and communities: a comparative case study of IEEE1394 and USB

Abstract

Success of technological standardisation is strongly associated with the process of how standards develop, or the governance mechanism administering the standardisation processes. Expanding existing standardisation literatures' narrow focus on market and government, this paper analyses comparatively two different standard governance mechanisms of committee and community based on the case study of rival personal computer (PC) interface standards, IEEE1394 and Universal Serial Bus (USB). Though standardisation committee, as a voluntary association, may overcome market failure problems and political haggles of government mandate, its organising principles of formality, consensus and fairness may delay decision making, lack user perspectives and poorly coordinate critical diffusion phases. In contrast, drawing on the literature of communities-of-practice', this exploratory research suggests that standardisation community equipped with the principles of informality, leaders' commitments and reciprocity rule could facilitate speedy decision making to cope with technological changes, effectively reflect users' interests and successfully support knowledge creation and sharing in the diffusion process.