The benefits of standardization are realised through the effective adoption, implementation and use of standards. Nonetheless, there are a cross-section of factors that impact the adoption and diffusion of standards. Indeed, within the IT standards research community, there is a research area devoted to looking at IT standards adoption. However, there are currently a limited number of peer-reviewed, empirical studies that look at the adoption of IT standards. One particular set of IT standards where this is true is ISO data-exchange standards, particularly those produced by the ISO subcommittee ISO/TC184/SC4, and to date there are only two known studies that have looked at the adoption of the 614 standards published by the SC4 subcommittee.
TopResearch Overview
The benefits of standardization are realised through the effective adoption, implementation and use of standards. Nonetheless, there are a cross-section of factors that impact the adoption and diffusion of standards. Indeed, within the IT standards research community, there is a research area devoted to looking at IT standards adoption. However, there are currently a limited number of peer-reviewed, empirical studies that look at the adoption of IT standards. One particular set of IT standards where this is true is ISO data-exchange standards, particularly those produced by the ISO subcommittee ISO/TC184/SC4, and to date there are only two known studies that have looked at the adoption of the 614 standards published by the SC4 subcommittee. The limited research within both the ISO/TC184/SC4 and IT standards research communities led to the emergence of the two main research questions that were the basis for the research aims.
- •
What are the factors and barriers critical to the adoption and diffusion of data-exchange standards across their target population?
- •
What can be done to facilitate and accelerate the adoption of data exchange standards across their target population?
In order to answer these questions and fulfil the aims of the research, the objectives of the research were:
- 1.
Develop a preliminary conceptual model that identifies the factors and barriers critical to the adoption of data-exchange standards, through the study of published literature.
- 2.
Revise and refine the preliminary conceptual models by analyzing the information obtained from interviews and other data sources related to the adoption and diffusion of two ISO/TC184/SC4 standards and two military standards, and.
- 3.
Further refine and test the preliminary conceptual model against the current adoption and implementation of PLCS using a ‘Standards Adoption Checklist’ developed from the conceptual model.
- 4.
Present recommendations to facilitate the adoption of data-exchange standards in general and PLCS specifically, from the experience gained in the above objectives.
These objectives were achieved and presented in the various chapters within this book. The following sections give a summary on how each objective was fulfilled.
TopResearch Findings, Novelty And Limitations
This section gives an overview of the results of the first three objectives. The findings, deliverables and novelty related to each of these objectives are also presented. The final part of this section details the limitations of this research.
Development of Conceptual Models
The first objective was to develop a preliminary conceptual model through a study of the published literature surrounding IT standards adoption. What emerged, as detailed in Chapter Three, is that there are two main approaches used in IT standards adoption research, these are the innovation-centric and adopter-centric approaches. Therefore, a decision was made to take a novel stance and incorporate both approaches into one study in order to limit the bias of doing a single approach and to get a more balanced picture of the factors and barriers critical to the adoption of data-exchange standards. Consequently, the scope of Objective 1 was extended to incorporate the development of both an innovation-centric and adopter-centric adoption conceptual model. These findings and the novelty of this approach are summarised in Table 1.
Table 1. Summary of findings and novelty based on Objective 1
| Objective 1 |
| Approach | Findings | Deliverables | Novelty | Chapter |
| Conducting a comprehensive literature review to develop a conceptual model | Two main approaches, innovation-centric and adopter-centric based mainly on DOI theory and Economics of standards | Preliminary innovation-centric and adopter-centric conceptual models | Developing both innovation and adopter centric models to carryout a combined analysis using both approaches in one study | Chapter Three |