An Empirical Investigation of E-business Standardization Initiatives: Enablers and Barriers of Industry-Wide Collaboration in Industry Standard Consortia

E-business standards are a critical infrastructure underlying electronic commerce. In many industries, e-business standards are collaboratively and voluntarily developed in a neutral industry standard consortium. To a larger extent, the sustainability of an industry standard consortium depends upon its members’ financial and technical contribution and support. Therefore, it is imperative to understand factors that motivate or hinder firms’ collaboration in e-business standards consortia. In this paper, we propose an organization-industry standard consortia-environment framework to investigate enablers and barriers of industry-wide collaboration in industry standard consortia. After completing a pilot study, we are collecting survey data from members of multiple neutral e-business industry standard consortia. We expect our study to make both theoretical and managerial contributions. Theoretically, we can better understand firms' motive behind the private provision of a public good, as many e-business standards provided by industry standard consortia are freely available to all potential users and thus exhibit public good properties. Managerially, our study will help consortia find effective ways to encourage firms' contribution and help firms to value their consortia membership.