Standards Stakeholders: Who Should, and Who Does, Set Standards?

Andrew Updegrove, Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

1/22/2008
(Original Publish Date: 4/2/2006)

The identification of categories of "stakeholders" (i.e., those individuals and entities that affect and/or are affected by the creation and deployment of standards) is an important tool for understanding many aspects of standard setting, such as why specific standards are created, why they turn out as they do, why some stakeholders participate and others do not, who standards affect in positive and negative fashions, and why. This article explores the concept of the stakeholder; describes a number of the categories of stakeholder that are most often discussed in the literature; identifies the motivations that each category has for participating in standard setting; gives examples of how and why those stakeholders that have the most at stake in the outcome of the standard setting process invest the most in affecting - and do in fact have the greatest influence over - outcomes; and what the effects of such disparities in influence have over those stakeholders that make a smaller, or no, investment in the standard setting process. It concludes by suggesting that standard-setting is a quasi-public function that supplements governmental regulatory power, making it incumbent upon SSOs to put in place mechanisms that ensure to the greatest extent possible the representation of the interests of all stakeholders in the standard setting process.