Innovation-The European Journal of Social Science Research最新文献

European standardisation, a key institution for the functioning of the EU single market, functions at the crossroads of private rule-making and public policy. Recently, it has been subjected to fierce scrutiny by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Expressed concerns relate to the legal value of standards and the legitimacy of institutions creating them but have broader implications for European competitiveness, highlighting the strategic role of standards. By far much of this critique has been directed towards the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the EU's crown jewel of technology standardisation. ETSI's normative power manifests itself in policymaking, legislation and market processes, rendering it an interesting organisation to study as a proxy to understand the legitimacy and resilience of European standardisation. Against this backdrop, this introduction sets the theoretical and legal context for this Special Issue. Upon discussing the background and dynamic of European standardisation, it provides a theoretical framework for 'crises' and 'legitimacy', tailoring it to the particular case of ETSI and the challenges it faces at the policy and judicial level. Lastly, it provides a critical reflection on the Research Articles in this Special Issue, linking them to the current discourses on legitimacy and resilience.

Over the years, ETSI, the prime European standard-setter for ICT standards, has experienced significant critique about its legitimacy, including more recently by the European Commission in the 2022 Standardization Strategy, which focused on the alleged deficiencies of its global participation model. Despite potential missteps in certain instances, ETSI has overall addressed such critique with remarkable success. In this article, we argue that this occurred thanks to various strategies that ETSI used to sustain its organizational resilience over the years. In regard to its interaction with its de facto controller, the European Commission, we argue that ETSI had recourse to three key resilience strategies: one where ETSI took a hard stance resisting to the Commission's desires (contestation), one where ETSI intentionally succumbed to the Commission's desires or preferences (orchestration), and one where ETSI opted for a reconciliatory approach to achieve commonly set objectives serving the mutual interest (collaboration). Interestingly, such strategies were not only resilience-enhancing, but also legitimacy-conducive. This article contributes to two different strings of academic literature relating to organizational resilience, on the one hand, and institutional legitimacy, on the other, by combining them in a manner that, to the best of our knowledge, had not been done before in the relevant literature. In the discussion section, we draw observations that are pertinent to discussions and developments since the 2022 European Union's Standardization Strategy.

This paper brings forth an empirical study of organizational resilience strategies in standard setting. The selection of ETSI (The European Telecommunications Standards Institute) as a case study for this purpose was motivated by ETSI's legal status as an ESO (European Standardization Organization), global impact, and the history of external criticism directed at the organization. Based on theoretical considerations and author's previous empirical research, it was expected that the organizational resilience strategies used by ETSI differ with regards to two dimensions: anticipation of the disturbance (proactive and reactive strategies); and the locus of the strategic effort (internal or external to the organization). A combination of deductive and inductive content analysis was applied to 12 semi-structured interviews with individuals who participate in standard setting activities within ETSI. The conducted analysis confirmed the expected 2 × 2 type of taxonomy determined by anticipation and locus of strategic effort. The identified 29 categories were thus categorized into four clusters of resilience strategies: proactive external (5), proactive internal (9), reactive external (5) and reactive internal (10) strategies. The discussion reflects on the historical organizational challenges, the resilience strategies reported in response to them, and how they might have contributed to continued thriving of ETSI despite organizational challenges.