Vertical E-Business Standards and Standards Developing Organizations: A Conceptual Framework

Kexin Zhao, PhD candidate ofInformation Systems in BusinessAdministration at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign., Mu Zia, Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the, and Michael Shaw, Hoeft Endowed Chair in Business Administration and

12/26/2007
(Original Publish Date: 2005)

E-business has seen significant growth over the past few years. To fully realize the benefits of e-business, common standards are required to define the syntax and semantics of Web-based information sharing among firms. Recently, numerous vertical standards developing organizations (SDO) have emerged to develop e-business standards. From a standard making perspective, this paper identifies the uniqueness of vertical e-business standards, explains why the consortium-based mechanism is popular among vertical e-business standardization projects and overviews the existing literature on consortia-based standardization. Based on literature reviews and anecdotal vertical e-business SDO cases, we propose a participant-technical content-institutional structure framework, which lays a foundation for vertical e-business SDO research and points out future research opportunities.