Risk Management: an Incentive to Standardize Standardization Processes

Since the industrial revolution, standardization has become a hybrid of technical design and political processes with major impact on markets, social welfare and economic activity. Standards are increasingly developed outside government regulatory venues in consortia and other forms of voluntary consensus bodies involving collaboration among private sector competitors, suppliers, customers, end users, trade association representatives and, increasingly, government representatives. The standardization process is regulated to avert self-interested collusion and to inspire democratic influences. Standards developed in voluntary consensus bodies are increasingly viewed as a socially beneficial because they balance a broader range of interests that accompany the diffusion of new technology. This chapter discusses the significant