Effectiveness of standards consortia: Social network perspectives

With the rapid assimilation of e-business capabilities into generally accepted business practices, there has been a rush to ensure standards exist to allow for seamless integration and interfaces between all the concerned parties. While standards consortia have grown in number and importance in the private sector over the past decade, little is known about how effective standards consortia are in addressing the needs for developing e-business standards. The current study examines the relationships between task characteristics of e-business standards and group effectiveness of standards consortia in terms of group centralization, group cohesiveness, and group diversity. We took a case study approach and analyze email archives from the ebXML standards efforts using social network analysis techniques. The findings of the study indicate that the expanding nature of e-business standards and a broader participation of IT vendor and users must be considered in order to improve group effectiveness of standards consortia. Managerial implications of the findings are discussed.