Organisational assimilation of vertical standards: exploring the interplay of technology destiny, firm-level factors and network effects

Vertical standards define industry-specific vocabularies, formalise business processes and provide data portability across systems by embedding semantic information in data payloads. Despite their potential, their assimilation across industries has been uneven. We consider the effect of a vertical standard’s winning or non-winning industry position on assimilation rates within organisations. We posit assimilation will be influenced by a firm’s ability to overcome value-realisation and implementation barriers, and by community-level effects such as business partner pressures and orphaning risks. We argue these effects are moderated by the winning or non-winning position of vertical standards in an industry.

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