Research

The impact of participation within formal standardization on firm performance

Several studies highlight the economic benefits of standards, while the benefit of taking part in standardization remains a rather unexplored mystery to date. In theory, standard setters not only benefit from the possibility to monitor and shape the development of standards but also access a wide range of knowledge sources in the standards committee. Therefore, the authors investigate how the participation within formal standardization is related to the performance of 1561 German companies. A Cobb-Douglas production function is estimated in order to use the Solow-residuals as indicator for the firm performance. Participation within formal standardization is measured by the number of committee seats at the German Institute for Standardization (DIN). The results suggest that participation within formal standardization is positively related to firm performance in the manufacturing sector. In the service sector, no clear evidence for such a relationship is found.

A copy of the research paper can be downloaded from the Springer website.

Authors:

Paul Wakke – Chair of Innovation Economics, Technische Universität Berlin

Knut Blind – Chair of Innovation Economics, Technische Universität Berlin