The Interrelationships between Technical Standards and Industry Structures: Actor-Network Based Case Studies of the Mobile Wireless and Television Industries in the US and the UK

David A. Tilson, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, PhD Candidate

6/20/2008
(Original Publish Date: 5/1/2008)

Technical standards ensure compatibility among the components of complex systems. Economists and others have studied standards selection, their effects on competition, and how sub-optimal standardization outcomes vary by the mechanisms used to create them. Actual standards creation has received less attention and their wider effects on industry structures are less understood. This research addresses three questions: (i) how standards making and adoption plays out in the design and implementation of large systems, (ii) how organizational and other actors coordinate with one another, with technology, and with standards, and (iii) how the creation and adoption of standards relates to these patterns of coordination.