Preface to the Focus Theme Section: 'Vertical Industry Information Technology Standards and Standardization,

Standardized business documents, data definitions, item description and identification and business processes have been seen as key to effective interorganizational commerce since the 1980s, when electronic data interchange (EDI) became the technology of choice for business-to-business coordination. Vertical information systems (VIS) standards are designed to promote communication and coordination among the organizations comprising a particular industry sector. Unfortunately, despite much promotion, EDI standards achieved only limited adoption; an estimated 2% of the world’s businesses, including just 300,000 US companies, have adopted EDI. Low penetration of electronic interconnection standards, particularly around business semantics, is believed to hinder electronic business and supply-chain integration. Recently, the availability of open Internet protocols and technologies, particularly eXtensible Markup Language (XML), has given a boost to both the adoption of EDI and the development of vertical (that is, industry-specific) XML-based data and process standards. Vertical efforts to develop such standards have emerged in electronics (RosettaNet), mortgage (MISMO), chemicals (CIDX), insurance (ACORD), petroleum (PIDX) and several other industries. Many observers expect these developments to lower the cost of electronic connection and spur adoption, particularly among smaller firms. However, some analysts believe that there may be public goods problems associated with the development of industry-wide standards. Larger companies with larger capital bases invest in the creation and maintenance of the standards, while smaller companies benefit from their adoption. This special issue is predicated on the idea that VIS standards have important differences from IT products and services standards and therefore require their own theory and empirical research. As several authors note, for example, VIS standards development is more likely to involve users participating in voluntary consortia than generic standards. How such user participation influences the collective action dynamics within standards consortia, as well as the technical choices that such consortia make, represents an area for new research. The assumption that VIS standardization is different may not be correct, but the only way to test it is to undertake systematic C op yr ig h t 2 0 0 5 El ec tr on ic M ar ke ts