Bargaining norms (EN)

The colour television story is — at least to a certain degree — exemplary for the complexity of standardisation processes and for the ambivalent effects that standardisation can evoke [Fickers, 2007]. It demonstrates the interlacement of technical, economic and political interests when it comes to defining the technical standard both at the national and international level. In addition, it points to the crucial importance of the social and the symbolic capital involved in an apparently ‘neutral thing’ such as a technical standard.

Technical standards are a typical phenomenon of complex societies. They are a means to achieve control and to regulate or coordinate the production and uses of technology. Proportional to the increase of complexity, standards are a prerequisite for enabling the (international) interlinking of technical components and systems. As Timmermans and Berg [Timmermans et al., 2003a; 2003b: 8] argue: “…standards emerged as one of the hallmarks of rationalization.” Technical standards act as control procedures and enable the interoperability of socio-technical systems: “Standards specify how we work, how our societies interact; they hold our sociotechnical societies together.” (p. 8) When technical standards gained crucial importance during the industrial revolution, they were primarily aimed at improving the trade and production process (e.g. Taylorism as an early example of standardising the production process). Standardisation became one of the central pillars in the functional ideology of scientific and technological progress.

Over the past decades, the EU has made standardisation a top priority in order to support the stabilisation of a common market and the unification of Europe. The aims expressed repeatedly by the EU, in reports on infrastructure development focus on interlinking national infrastructures, cross-border exchange of people, freight, data or information, interoperability and safety. All these aims require standards. The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) sees standards as an essential way to “help building the ‘soft infrastructure’ of modern, innovative economies.” Hence, the development of infrastructure networks cannot be understood without taking standards into account. Thinking about the future of transnational infrastructure development implies a better understanding of the process of standardisation.

In this book, researchers and practitioners argue that standardisation should be understood as technological as well as social and political. Although standardisation is sometimes seen as a boring, highly technical and apolitical process, the contrary is true. Standards are socially constructed in complex and lengthy interaction and negotiation processes. They are inherently political. The high stakes involved in standardisation processes (political, economic, but also in terms of reputation and prestige) and their contested The colour television story is — at least to a certain degree — exemplary for the complexity of standardisation processes and for the ambivalent effects that standardisation can evoke [Fickers, 2007]. It demonstrates the interlacement of technical, economic and political interests when it comes to defining the technical standard both at the national and international level. In addition, it points to the crucial importance of the social and the symbolic capital involved in an apparently ‘neutral thing’ such as a technical standard.

Technical standards are a typical phenomenon of complex societies. They are a means to achieve control and to regulate or coordinate the production and uses of technology. Proportional to the increase of complexity, standards are a prerequisite for enabling the (international) interlinking of technical components and systems. As Timmermans and Berg [Timmermans et al., 2003a; 2003b: 8] argue: “…standards emerged as one of the hallmarks of rationalization.” Technical standards act as control procedures and enable the interoperability of socio-technical systems: “Standards specify how we work, how our societies interact; they hold our sociotechnical societies together.” (p. 8) When technical standards gained crucial importance during the industrial revolution, they were primarily aimed at improving the trade and production process (e.g. Taylorism as an early example of standardising the production process). Standardisation became one of the central pillars in the functional ideology of scientific and technological progress.

Over the past decades, the EU has made standardisation a top priority in order to support the stabilisation of a common market and the unification of Europe. The aims expressed repeatedly by the EU, in reports on infrastructure development focus on interlinking national infrastructures, crossborder exchange of people, freight, data or information, interoperability and safety. All these aims require standards. The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) sees standards as an essential way to “help building the ‘soft infrastructure’ of modern, innovative economies.” Hence, the development of infrastructure networks cannot be understood without taking standards into account. Thinking about the future of transnational infrastructure development implies a better understanding of the process of standardisation.

In this book, researchers and practitioners argue that standardisation should be understood as technological as well as social and political. Although standardisation is sometimes seen as a boring, highly technical and a-political process, the contrary is true. Standards are socially constructed in complex and lengthy interaction and negotiation processes. They are inherently political. The high stakes involved in standardisation processes (political, economic, but also in terms of reputation and prestige) and their contested nature, make standards and the processes interesting strategic research sites. Standardisation processes are complex and difficult to achieve. Paradoxically, standards developed to coordinate or control people or processes, turn out to be particularly difficult to control themselves [Ciborra, 2000; Hanseth et al., 1994; Timmermans, 2003a]. To negotiate norms and standards proves to be a technological as well as political tour de force. In formal standardisation processes, a variety of actors are involved: engineers, politicians, industrialists, international standardisation bodies etc. These negotiation processes often remain hidden to the general public and for scholars interested in studying these processes; it is often hard to find out what happened and why. This also defines the extent to which governmental and entrepreneurial policies can influence the processes of standardisation.

One way to get a better grasp of what is going on in standardisation processes is to focus on these micro-level processes of arguing and bargaining. Researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds have been studying standardisation and the negotiation processes involved. Our aim here is to bring together perspectives from the history and sociology of technology, economics, business studies and political science. Their views on standardisation processes will be confronted with the views of experts who were actively involved in such processes. Key questions that will be addressed are:

• How do technical standards emerge?
• What is the role of negotiations in these processes?
• Who are the negotiators?
• Which problems do they face?
• What is the role of national and international (political) styles, informal networks, reputation and prestige?
• Finally, what does this mean for research and policy on standardisation?

This work combines two ambitions. In the first place, it feeds into a growing academic interest in standardisation processes. It offers the reader a mosaic of different research perspectives on bargaining and negotiating technical standards. In the second place, it helps to prepare the way for outlooks into transnational infrastructure development, as part of a foresight exercise performed by STT Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends. It wants to signal the importance of standardisation for infrastructure development and to analyse, where policies could potentially focus on to stimulate effective standardisation processes. We challenge the readers to translate the insights of the different case studies to implications for policy on both a national and European level.

The aims can be summarised as follows:

• Multidisciplinarity: We want to broaden the intellectual horizon by asking scholars from a diversity of scientific fields to reflect upon negotiating standards.
• Interdisciplinarity: We hope to integrate these view in a coherent perspective on negotiating standards.
• Transdisciplinarity: We want to learn from the interactions between expert practitioners and scholars.

In the first part, Tineke Egyedi and Henk de Vries make an attempt to map the diverse field of standardisation research from their own disciplinary perspective. They critically reflect upon the current trends in standardisation and standardisation research. Egyedi represents a social scientific perspective on standardisation, including research in the field of Science, Technology and Society studies. De Vries takes a business studies perspective on standardisation research.

In Part two, the focus moves to negotiation processes. As an expert on political negotiation theories Frank Pfetsch presents a number of negotiation models from the field of conflict studies. Furthermore, he discusses the role of political styles and national cultures in negotiation processes.

In Part three, the historical investigations on the QWERTY-case (by Andreas Reinstaller) and the ITU frequency allocation (by Christian Henrich-Franke) emphasize the importance of social networks and ‘soft factors’ in standardisation processes and — in a more general sense — in innovation as such. Both reinforce the necessity to historicise the analysis of past standardisation processes, in order to gain useful insights into the complex practices of negotiating standards. Thereby, contributing to a empirical enrichment of sometimes, too abstract standardisation theories, especially in the field of economics.

In Part four, two historians of technology, Nina Wormbs and Marine Moguen-Toursel, present empirical studies on the development of telecommunication and transport standards. Wormbs discusses standardisation as a form of regulation. She analyses the case of early radio broadcasting in Europe (1920s) and the negotiations on, for instance, the formula for allocating wavelengths. Moguen-Toursel reveals the tough negotiations on the European Commission level for standard weights and dimensions of commercial vehicles (like trucks) (1949-the mid 1970s).

In Part five, two interviews with ‘practitioners’ discuss the experience of the negotiation processes that they were involved in. Hans Borgonjen, head of the R&D department of the ICT organisation for the Dutch Police, was involved in the negotiations around the Tetra standard: a formal technical communication standard for services in the ‘command and control’ sector (like emergency services). Willem Wakker is director of ACE Consulting. He has been active in the world of standardisation since 1988 and was involved in various international standardisation committees.

Finally, a brief conclusion sums up the outcomes of the different articles and sketches the implications for future research and policy.

References

• Ciborra, C.U., ed. (2000). From Control to Drift. The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures. Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Fickers, A. (2007). „Politique De La Grandeur“ Versus „Made in Germany“. Politische Kulturgeschichte Der Technik Am Beispiel Der Pal-Secam-Kontroverse. Oldenbourg, München
•  Hanseth, O. et al. (1994). The Politics of Networking Technology in Health Care. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2, 1-2, pp. 109-130
• Timmermans, S., M. Berg (2003a). The Gold Standard : The Challenge of Evidence-Based Medicine and Standardisation in Health Care. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA
• Timmermans, S., M. Berg (2003b). The Gold Standard. The Challenge of Evidence-Based Medicine and Standardisation in Health Care. Temple University Press, Philadelphia