Abstract
A technical standards alliance (TSA) is a collection of firms organized for a common goal: developing, revising, and promoting technical standards. A firm may participate in standardization through one or more TSAs: its TSA network. However, little is known about the influencing factors and their boundary conditions for gaining firm-level benefits from such involvement. This study fills this gap. Drawing on a network perspective on standardization, we examine the effect of the firm's TSA network and its absorptive capacity. Using a sample of 437 Chinese IT and automotive industry firms participating in non-governmental Chinese standardization groups, we find positive impacts of participation. A firm's central position and relationship strength within a TSA network positively affect firm performance, and absorptive capacity contributes to this effect. Environmental uncertainty acts as a moderator in the relationship between absorptive capacity and firm performance. These findings add to the literature on the impacts of standardization and are informative for companies that consider participating in standardization.
Highlights
The integration of technologies induces increasingly complex sys tems
Taking firm performance as the outcome to analyze the impacts of participation in standardization on the firm itself, we show that partic ipation is beneficial, and benefits increase when a firm is at the center of the network and maintains strong relationships within the technical standards alliance (TSA) network
The results indicate that network centrality, relationship strength, and absorptive capacity positively correlate with firm perfor mance
Summary
The integration of technologies induces increasingly complex sys tems. Firms need agreed-upon interfaces between system parts and increasingly decide to participate in standardization alliances. Standards consortia differ in access rules, voting, and decision-making procedures (Egyedi, 2001). They may have less variation in participating stakeholders, allowing a firm to better control its standardization efforts, outputs, and strategy (Kamps et al, 2017). Standardization is a social coordination mechanism (Kwak et al, 2011) Both types of standards developing organizations can be seen as an alliance: a partnership between firms (and sometimes other stakeholders as well). A firm’s TSA network covers a set of relationships formed by cooperation among stakeholders included in the development, revision, and promotion of technical standards (Blind et al, 2012)
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