Assessing business transaction standards and their adoption

Nowadays businesses organisations increasingly want to be interoperable so that they can collaborate with other organizations. This interoperability can be achieved through the use of business transaction standards, by which those organizations that use these standards collectively form a value added network. However the effectivity of these standards is largely dependant on the number of organizations that have adopted them, and thus it is very important that the standards conform to the conditions that organizations have towards adopting these standards. This thesis describes the search for aspects that influence the adoption of business transactions standards. As well as identifying methods through which an Standard Development Organization (SDO) can influence these aspects so that more organizations will adopt the standard and subsequently higher interoperability is achieved. Building on recent literature, describing technical standards (Kaa, 2009), we have constructed a model through which standard aspects can be compared with the adoption conditions that organizations have. Subsequently methods were identified by which an SDO can influence standard adoption through their aspects. This was done by using cross case analysis methods whereby aspects that influence the adoption conditions of business transaction standards were identified. The cases used were analyzed using a multiple data collection set up ensuring a stronger hypotheses building process. In order to assure that every aspect involved in standard adoption is identified we have used cases describing standards that are used in different domains. The cases used in this thesis demonstrated that early involvement of organizations having high market powers (preferably in the form of a federation) is important for the adoption whereby the development and maintenance of the standard should preferably be funded by those organizations that have most to gain from broad standard adoption. Furthermore open characteristics, modularity and efficient business processes which subsequently yield cost advantages are perceived imperative for the adoption of business transaction standards. However the most striking results from the analysis was that the institutional forces driving organizations into adopting business transaction standards are mostly dependant on the powers differences that exist amongst organizations that reside in the specific domain. When there are large power differences then aspects that reside in the competitive environment are of more importance, whenever there are low differences more emphasis is towards the technical (IT resource) aspects of the standard. The results from this thesis can be used by SDO’s in order to assess which standard aspects are of importance during specific intervals of the standard dominance process in order to ensure it’s adoption. Furthermore managers can use the model described in this thesis to assess every aspect with their domain and subsequently choose a standard that they should or should not support.