STANDARDIZATION, NETWORK ECONOMICS, AND IT

Esben S Andersen, Jan Damsgaard, Ole Hanseth, John L King, M. Lynne Markus, and Eric Monteiro

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2000)

Standard software systems pervade our lives, both as professionals working in an organization and as private persons. Organizations and individuals alike have to make multiple decisions. What browser to use (Netscape or Explorer)? What office suite to purchase? What instant messenger to use (preferably, the one most of your friends or colleagues use; AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo represent three alternatives)? What operating system to purchase in order to protect the current IT infrastructure? What Internet search engine to purchase for the company's intranet? Whether to buy a single, double, or triple band cellular phone depending on where you live in the U.S. and how much you travel? The answers to these questions are obviously related to the technological and social networks in which we are embedded, but it is not always easy to specify how.