SHAPING STANDARDS

People and Voting Rights and the Case of IEEE 802.11

Kai Jakobs

RWTH Aachen University, Informatik 4, Ahornstr. 55, 52074 Aachen, Germany

Keywords: Standards, Standardisation, Social shaping of technology.

Abstract: Based on the approach of the ‘social shaping of technology’, this paper will provide a brief discussion of a)

the impact that the individuals who populate a standards body’s working group, and b) this body’s voting

rules have on its final standards. It will primarily draw upon a qualitative empirical study. In particular, this

paper will use the IEEE 802.11 group as a real-world sample group to further highlight the issues discussed

more theoretically above.

1 INTRODUCTION AND

MOTIVATION

Colloquially, the term ‘standard’ is used for

specifications of very diverse origins. Windows and

SAP/R3 are (industry/proprietary) standards, XML

and UML are (consortium) standards, and UMTS

and ISDN are (formal) standards. Yet, regardless of

their respective origin, (successful) standards are

crucial building blocks of all virtually all ICT

systems. Think of it – the success of the Internet, for

instance, may to no small amount be put down to the

sheer existence, simplicity and effectiveness of its

core protocols, TCP/IP.

Thus, standards now under development will be

an integral part of future ICT systems, and will to no

small extent define their functionality. In a way, this

provides us with an opportunity for taking a glimpse

into the future, albeit possibly a blurred one. What’s

more, there may even be a chance to pro-actively try

and shape these future systems by shaping today’s

standards setting. After all, a standard does not come

out of the blue, but is a product of standards

development process and of the environment within

which it emerges. Thus, if the characteristics of this

environment were known this might enable an early

shaping of tomorrow’s ICT systems.

Perhaps a bit surprisingly, I would consider

‘people’ to be one of the major influencing factors in

standardisation. After all, a standard originates from

a technical committee or working group, where a

group of individuals try to find a working solution to

a given problem; it is here were the basic technical

decisions are made. That is, we will need to look at

the motivations, attitudes and views that influence

these people’s work if we want a better

understanding of why a particular specification

emerged the way it did.

The remainder of the paper is organised as

follows. Some brief theoretical background on the

Social Shaping of Technology (SST) is provided in

chapter 2. Subsequently, chapter 4 highlights the

impact an individual may have on the outcome of a

standards working group, and discusses the impact

of the working group’s voting rights. Finally, some

brief conclusions are presented in chapter 5.

2 SOME BRIEF THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND

Technological artefacts in general, and especially

such powerful representatives as ICT systems, will

exert potentially strong impact on their environment.

Yet, the same holds for the reverse direction. That is,

complex interactions between ICT systems and their

respective environments can be observed.

Technology may assume both an active and a

passive role; that is, technological artefacts and their

environment are mutually interdependent. The

environment within which technology is used and

employed has, among others, social, cultural,

societal, and organisational behaviours, rules and

norms. It is clear that technology cannot emerge

Jakobs K.

SHAPING STANDARDS - People and Voting Rights and the Case of IEEE 802.111.

DOI: 10.5220/0002769500050012

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technology (WEBIST 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-674-025-2

completely independent from such external

influences. However, the impact ICT may have on

organisations, or indeed society as a whole, has thus

far attracted considerably more attention than the

powers that shape this technology in the first place.

Especially the impact of ICT within organisational

settings (e.g. on a company’s performance, or its

role as an enabler of business process re-

engineering) has been subject to a vast number of

studies and analyses. Keywords such as

‘organisational transformation’ ‘technology

management’, and ‘management of change’, can

frequently be found in the literature, typically

denoting studies on how the introduction and

subsequent use of ICT have changed a particular

organisational environment - for better or worse.

Only recently has the reverse direction of impact

been studied, i.e. the one exerted from organisational

and societal conditions on technology.

2.1 Social Shaping of Technology

Two mutually exclusive schools have dominated

research on technology and organisations until the

early eighties (and are still in evidence). Proponents

of the ‘organisational choice’ model consider

technology as a vehicle to both reflect and foster the

interests of particular groups; the process of change

can be, and indeed is, shaped entirely by policy

makers or organisation’s managers; these actors

have unlimited technological choices. “Technology

has no impact on people or performance in an

organisation independent of the purposes of those

who would use it, and the responses of those who

have to work with it” (Buchanan, 2004). In contrast,

‘technological determinism’ in essence postulates

that ICT determines the behaviour of organisations,

that the consequences of manipulating a given

technology will always be the same, independent of

who manipulates and within which context. It

follows that, according to this view, organisations

have little choice but to adapt to the requirements of

technology; particular paths of technological

development are inevitable; like organisations,

society at large also has no other choice but to adapt

(Williams, 1997).

Research into SST largely emerged as a response

to technological determinism (see e.g. (Williams &

Edge, 1996) for an in-depth introduction). SST

acknowledges that technology indeed has an impact

on its environment, but that at the same time it is

well framed through technical, but rather more

through e.g. organisational, societal, cultural and

economic factors. In particular, SST attempts to

unveil the interactions between these technical and

social factors. Abandoning the idea of inevitable

technological developments implies that choices can

be made regarding, for instance, acquisition, the use,

and particularly the design of technological artefacts.

There may be a broad variety of reasons upon which

these choices are based. In an organisational context

this may include purely technical reasons, as e.g. the

need to integrate legacy systems, but decisions may

also take into account company particulars, as for

instance organisational or reporting structures. These

choices, in turn, may lead to different impacts on the

respective social or organisational environments.

Thus, studying what shaped the particular

technology offers a chance to proactively manipulate

that very impact expected to result from this

particular choice. At the same time this capability

should also contribute to the prediction – and thus

prevention – of undesirable side effects potentially

resulting from a new technology. After all,

technology tends to have other effects besides those

actually intended, and these effects need to be

explored as well. On the other hand, the respective

environment shapes technical artefacts and systems

during design and in use, i.e. at the site of the actual

implementation.

2.2 Shaping Standardisation

Technological artefacts embody, and thus transfer,

their respective environment of origin. The same

holds for standards, which result from work in a

committee. This alone implies that adaptations will

subsequently be required if a system is to be

exported to other markets, or user organisations,

with different environments. “The shaping process

begins with the earliest stages of research and

development” (Williams, 1992). This observation

points to a direct link between the shaping of

technology and standardisation activities. Especially

since the advent of pro-active standardisation

technological systems have increasingly been rooted

in standards activities. In fact, the shaping of

technology needs to start here.

Standards emerge through the co-operation and

joint efforts of different individuals in technical

committees and working groups. Whilst in theory

these individuals act in their capacity as

‘independent’ experts, their views, beliefs, and

prejudices have to a considerable degree been

shaped by the environment within which they live

and, especially, work. That is, various factors that

may shape technology are also likely be channelled

into the working groups of the international

WEBIST 2010 - 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

standards setting bodies. The corporate environment

of the group members’ respective employer, for

instance, will have a major impact on the different

visions of how a technology should be used, and the

ideas of how this can be achieved. Therefore, they

will also exert a significant impact on the work of

the committees. This holds especially in the case of

anticipatory, or pro-active, standards which specify

new services from scratch, and thus offer the

opportunity to incorporate to some (a considerable?)

degree the particular presumptions, views, and ideas

of the members of the originating committee (and

their respective employers).

A reactive standard (i.e. one that basically just

rubber-stamps an existing technology) will likewise

transpose the environment from which it emerged;

this will be the corporate environment (using this

term very loosely) of its inventor (i.e. typically a

manufacturer or a service provider) who originally

specified the system upon which the standard will be

based. Thus, this company’s visions will implicitly

be embodied in the standard specification, together

with the ideas and views of its representative(s).

A first attempt to put together the individual

factors that contribute to the shaping of a standard

yields the following list:

1. External forces, including e.g.

– advances in science and technology,

– prevailing societal norms,

– legislation.

2. The context within which a WG works,

including e.g.

– the rules and by-laws of the respective

Standards Setting Body (SSB),

– the SSB’s ‘culture’.

3. Individual major stakeholders’ (vendors and

possibly large users) preferences, including e.g.

– technical interests

– corporate strategies.

4. The immediate context from which a standard

emerges, including e.g.

– WG members’ views, ideas, competencies,

attitudes, backgrounds, etc,

– members’ communication capabilities,

– the roles they assume.

In the following, I will look more closely at 4.

3 THE INDIVIDUAL’S ROLE

3.1 A Little Background

Different players exert varying degrees of influence

over an SSB’s process, depending on their

respective levels of interest in a new standard, but

also on rather more mundane aspects like deep

pockets and market power. However, at the end of

the day, a standard’s specification results from the

efforts of the members of an SSB’s working group.

Consequently, these individuals’ motivations,

attitudes and views are very likely to have an

influence on their contributions to the standards

setting process, and thus on its outcome.

Various factors, which do not necessarily bear a

relation to the technology to be standardised, are

channelled into an SSB’s working groups (WGs),

and shape the process outcome. (Jakobs et al., 1998)

argue that the respective corporate environments of

the WG members’ employers, for instance, are

playing a major role here. The different visions of

how a technology should be used, and the ideas of

how this can be achieved are shaped by these local

environments, which therefore also exert an impact

on the standardisation work. This holds especially in

the case of anticipatory standards, which specify

new services from scratch, and thus offer the

opportunity to incorporate to some degree the

particular presumptions of the (more outspoken)

members of the originating WG. Yet, a reactive

standard will likewise transpose the environment

from which it originally emerged; i.e. the corporate

environment of its inventor who specified the system

upon which the standard will be based.

3.2 Perceived Influential Factors

To find out which such non-technical factors

actually do play a role, and thus to better understand

why a standard emerges the way it does, we need to

have a closer look inside WGs.

In a (smallish) study of factors that influence the

standards setting process at WG level within ISO

and ITU-T, (Jakobs et al., 2001) showed that a

WG’s decisions are taken for a variety of reasons, a

proposal’s technical merits being but one of them.

For example, about one out of three respondents

from ISO observed that it is individuals that are most

powerful.

“Oddly enough, it's been my experience that

_individuals_ dominate ISO. Sometimes the

individual will have a powerful multinational

corporation or government/national interest

SHAPING STANDARDS - People and Voting Rights and the Case of IEEE 802.111

on their side, but the bully pulpit is

controlled by individuals, and only those

with a strong sense of purpose survive.”

Much in line with the above observation, many

respondents from ISO and ITU stress that speaking

out at meetings for or against a proposal is the most

important single factor influencing technical

decisions. That is, even good proposals will hardly

be considered if nobody is available to explain or

defend them at meetings.

“For any given technical decision the

presence of supporters/opponents weighs

heavily, for in practice unless there is

someone or some organization that

champions a solution and pushes it forward

it does not get as much

consideration/exposure as alternate

solutions. That is, group members typically

do not delve into researching solutions that

someone happened to send us unless such

solution at first glance seems to be

overwhelmingly good. More likely the

members push the solutions that they already

understand.”

Along similar lines, the influence of those who

are prepared to put in extra work should not be

under-estimated. These two aspects are probably

linked – those with strong views are more likely to

be inclined to invest time and effort to get their

views through.

“Often the group "leaders" (including formal

editors, and strong personalities who are not

formal leaders) have tremendous influence.

(This is not necessarily bad.)”

Another factor identified as influential – though

overall said to be of lower importance – is a

proposal’s technical merit; underlying company

interests may also have to be taken into account.

“Unless you are at the meeting, your view is

not taken into account (no matter how

technically correct it may be). This is the

overwhelming factor that decides the content

of the standard. Company interests (political

influence at the voting level) is the next

priority. Technical merit is of little

importance - standards are usually a poor

compromise of many strong views”.

“The technical viability of a decision does

carry great weight. As almost all members at

the technical committee meeting level are

engineers, the technical prowess of the

solution, tied with the credibility (knowledge)

of the person presenting it are very

influential. On occasion, a company which

already has a product back in their labs will

also prove to be a formidible opponent.”

The above observations stress the importance of

the rather more non-technical aspects of the

standardisation process. Clearly, these aspects are

strongly linked to the individual WG members’

attitudes and approaches. However, as stated above,

these, in turn, are to a considerable degree shaped by

their respective work environments.

3.3 The Case of IEEE 802.11

In the IEEE, membership – including voting rights –

in the ‘international programme’ is assigned to

individuals (as opposed to e.g., companies). That is,

here as well a closer look at the roles, views, and

motivations of WG members is of interest – do WG

members actually act based on their personal views

and perceptions, or do other factors play a role, too?

To this end, a questionnaire comprising 16 open

ended questions was distributed to a number of

individuals who played an important role during the

development of the IEEE 802.11 set of standards

(Jakobs et al, 2010). The findings from this survey

should be taken as a snapshot – the idea was to shed

some light on different aspects associated with the

IEEE’s ‘individual membership’ approach.

Almost all respondents have a strictly technical

background, with job titles such as ‘communication

engineer’ or ‘system architect’. They were all very

active in the process, and typically attended almost

all meetings (which gave them almost permanent

voting rights; they are conferred after attendance of

3 out of 4 consecutive plenary meetings, and need to

be maintained through continuing participation in

both meetings and ballots). However, only very few

had previous experience in standards development.

Obviously, the initial motivations for attendance

differed, but interest in the technology dominated

(which is no big surprise considering the

respondents’ engineering background).

With primarily engineers populating the WGs

one could be inclined to suspect that influence

during deliberations is based on the respective

technical merits of the proposals on the table. Yet, it

appears that other factors are at least as influential

here. Two typical responses:

“Most influence came from 1/3 powerful

organizations (companies), 1/3 strong

technical proposals, 1/3 active and respected

company representatives”.

“The influence came through a combination

of strong technical proposals, active

WEBIST 2010 - 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

representatives and powerfull

organizations”.

Standards setting is a costly business (see e.g.,

(Spring & Weiss, 1995); things have not improved

since then). Thus, a link between the economic

strength of a company and its interest in a specific

standard on the one hand, and the level of its

representation in the body developing this standard

on the other may safely be assumed . Indeed,

“There are active/respected representatives

from most large organizations because it

costs so much to commit people to creating

the standard, and active/respected

representatives gravitate to organizations

that support the standards effort”

Said “large organizations” were typically (chip)

manufacturers:

“90% of all attendance was by

manufacturers. Manufacturers are (and

continue to be) the most influential in the

committees as they are primary companies

responsible for creating and distributing the

technology”.

To a considerable extent, developing standards is

about the distribution, and the use, of power. The

above suggests that in the case of the 802.11 power

was – for obvious reasons – primarily with large

manufacturers. With their vested interest in the

technology they were prepared to invest heavily in

R&D efforts, and to send representatives who were

widely respected in the industry to the WG

meetings. These individuals came armed with good

proposals (the results of the R&D efforts), for which

they could make a strong case. Strong corporate

interest, good proposals and respected and

knowledgeable proponents seems to be a wining

combination (whether or not two out of these would

do remains an open issue). In the words of a

respondent, influence in the WG

“ … is a combination [of e.g., powerful

organisation, deep pockets, strong technical

proposals, active/respected representatives],

but the companies that were the strongest in

the market also put most effort in the

standard by means of number of people,

proposals, technical knowledge, experience

in the field. But there are also examples of

small companies with very smart/ respected

representatives who took and got a lot of

bandwidth”.

These quotes seem to suggest that corporate

interests were at least very visible inside 802.11.

Yet, the question remains if WG members actually

represented their respective employers’ or clients’

proposals, or if they supported other proposals they

felt them to have more merits (for instance, because

they considered them technically superior). If the

former were the case, all representatives of a

company that submitted a proposal should rally

behind it. In fact, respondents agree – albeit not

unanimously – that such behaviour could normally

be observed. Of course, representatives of a

company defending their employer’s proposal is not

necessarily a contradiction to ‘individual

membership’. After all, the developers of a corporate

proposal were most likely the ones also attending

standards meetings; this way, their interests and

those of the employer happened to be aligned. As

one respondent put it:

“[Different representatives of one company]

mostly acted in unison based on their

affiliaton, and usually because they had a

vested interest in their proposal or position

succeeding ….”

In addition to such vested interests, fear of

reprimand and reprisal might also be behind a vote:

“In general, when a company’s rep did not

represent the affiliations point of view, they

tended not to appear at the next meeting.

There are expections to this rule, but in

general, if you work for a company, you are

voting for their proposal”.

While most respondents agree that supporting

their employer’s or client’s proposal was the norm,

they also agreed that deviations from this behaviour

could be observed as well. However (and this

suggests that fear of retaliation did not just come out

of the blue),

“This was not a frequent phenomenon as far

as I can tell. But there are examples of

individuals who did (for whatever reason,

sometimes they even self did not notice that

they pleaded against their own company). I

can think of one succes, but the individual

lost (left?) his job afterwards”.

Apparently, potential reasons for rogue acting

(and voting) were diverse, the ambition to

standardise on the best technical solution being a

comparably popular one:

“… there were a number of very good people

who worked toward the creation of the best

standard that could be formed regardless of

their companies position and agenda”.

However, acting ‘politically’ is also not unheard

of:

“… people would purposely vote opposite to

their affiliation to *appear* fair minded”.

SHAPING STANDARDS - People and Voting Rights and the Case of IEEE 802.111

Similar behaviour can be explained by exploiting

IEEE rules:

“Other times they would vote contrarily

when it could be predicted, or sometimes just

in case, the vote would confirm that alternate

position anyway. That would ensure that the

company had at least one vote on the

prevailing side so that indidvual could later

make a motion for reconsideration – again

that’s another political ploy”.

The latter two reasons for ‘acting individually’

are really cases of ‘corporate tactics’. Thus, so far, it

would seem that only some cases of ‘individualism’

can be explained by WG members’ acting as

individuals (as opposed to ‘company reps’).

The idea of ‘individual membership’ also

implies that voting behaviour should not change

with of WG-member’s new affiliation, or with a

consultant’s new client. No clear picture emerged

here. Still, a concrete observation by one respondent:

“Yes. A change of affiliation either as an

employee or consultant has caused changes

in on formerly held positions. A recent case

in the IEEE 802 where two companies had

brought in opposing technologies resulted in

a stalemate position. The larger corporation

purchased the smaller opposing technology

company. So there became a committee

where all the members were the same as

before but the purchased company voters

now had a new affiliation and voted

accordingly”.

Even if only some respondents reported such

occurrences it seems safe to assume that at least

several WG-members do change views depending

on those of their current employer (which is

perfectly understandable).

With a group of engineers discussing technical

matters one should not be surprised to find evidence

of the ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome; likewise

clashes of egos may be suspected. Respondents do

indeed report such incidences that obviously

occurred quite frequently. One responded observed

that

“Many members can not separate valid

technical criticism from “your baby is ugly”.

This is more frequent than necessary”.

Such clashes may be over both personal and

corporate views (e.g., if a company depends on a

certain technology to be standardised), or over

procedures. This is little surprise, as ‘being

outspoken’ and ‘having a sense of purpose’ are

essential attributes for successful standards setters

(Jakobs et al., 2001). At the same time, respondents

noted that such personal clashes might well go hand

in hand with clashes of corporate interests,

“… and it was more of a combination of both

ego and money. Many clashes were driven

due to big investments in company

technology directions where the direction of

the standard was important to the financial

health of the companies involved”.

Finally, the observation that existing

implementations might well have a detrimental

effect on a proposal’s chances of being accepted is

interesting.

“Technical merits are important but never

the most important. Implementability, time to

market (for all), fairness are equally

important to drive decisions”.

Obviously, the desire not to favour one company

(the implementer) over others plays a role, too. This

– rather striking – aspect surfaced quite frequently,

“Solutions already implemented did play a

strong role, but could also be a strong

reason to change things, to level the playing

field (by forcing changes for certain vendors

that already had an implementation)”.

“I have never seen that a decision is taken

that is in the benefit of only one company

(because it already has solutions/products)”.

And, even more strongly:

“No four organizations can make 802.11 do

anything.”

Even if the latter may be a slight exaggeration,

these comments suggest that (many) members of the

802.11 groups were not prepared to let their work be

overly dominated by corporate interests, and also

that at least some of them were actively acting

against any such dominance.

Accordingly, finding as many allies as possible,

and forming strong alliances is an integral part of the

game (‘if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’).

This necessity is not least triggered by the IEEE

balloting process, which requires a 75% level of

support for a proposal to enter the next stage of the

process.

“With respect to 802.11 DS PHY, main

issues were agreed to by a coalition of

companies out side of IEEE meetings and

then were brought into IEEE 802.11 for

debate. THis coordination between

NCR/Aironet/Harris ensured sucess of

802.11b”.

“In the end (the important decisions) are

influenced most by the strength of companies

(number of voters) and coalitions between

companies. I have never seen that a decision

WEBIST 2010 - 6th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

is taken that is in the benefit of only one

company ( because it already has

solutions/products)”.

These observations suggest that once everything

has been said and done the decision about success

and failure burns down to a simple head-count. A

number of individual voters together form a

‘corporate vote’ (there may be exceptions), and

enough such ‘corporate votes’ (i.e., a strong

coalition) lead to the success of a proposal.

4 BRIEF SUMMARY AND

ANALYSIS

The survey responses paint a somewhat ambivalent

picture. On the one hand, it seems that the majority

of members of the 802.11 WGs have a very strong

sense of fairness – they try not to allow a single

powerful company, or a group of them, to dominate

the process, may well consider existing pilot

implementations as an unfair advantage and

accordingly reject the associated proposal. On the

other hand, it is safe to say that the majority of the

leading figures are coming from exactly these

powerful companies – they have the means and the

motivation to invest heavily in the standards setting

process, as the return on investment may be

enormous. In addition, their employees are likely to

be motivated to assume formal roles in the process

(Chair, secretary, technical editor, etc), thus getting

additional influence.

Overall, it seems that WG members cast their

votes at least with a view towards their respective

employers’ business interests. Yet, exceptions from

this seem to not-so-infrequent, and typically aim at

technically superior solutions. Likewise, the reports

about WG members adapting their point of view to

the one held by their current employer do not hint at

strong personal opinions (rather at pragmatism).

Thus, here again we do not see a homogeneous

picture (of course, it is hard to vote against your

employer’s interests when you see people being

fired for having done exactly that; another course of

events not entirely unheard of, according to some

respondents). Then again, the apparently fairly

frequent clashes of egos suggest strong feelings

about a proposal (there may be other reasons

involved as well, though).

All in all, I do not believe that ‘individual’

membership is making a big difference. The

responses from 802.11 members are pretty much in

line with those from members of other standards

bodies (ISO also prescribes that committee members

“act in a personal capacity” (ISO, 2004)). People act

differently; some may consider ‘individual’

membership as carte blanche to push their own

proposals, others will still act exclusively on behalf

of their employers, both regardless of the official

membership rules.

From a theoretical perspective, one could argue

that research into the role of the individual in the

development of standards (probably not so much in

the development of technology) is called for.

Specifically, it would appear that one cannot

necessarily assume that the professional background

of a WG member, or the specifics of his/her

employer have an immediate impact on the work

done in the WG, or the views represented there.

And in more practical terms: what can the

interested companies do about this situation? After

all, companies would like to see their corporate

strategy and/or technology being promoted by the

people they send to SSBs’ working groups.

Companies would be well advised to educate the

people they are sending to SSBs’ working groups.

This education primarily needs to cover relevant

corporate strategies and goals that need to be

observed. After all, it is a huge difference if a

company’s goal is to have a standard – any standard

– in order to broaden or even create a market, or if

they want to push their own technical solution. But

education must not stop there – it should also cover

more mundane aspects like SSBs’ regulations and

bylaws, as well as negotiation and diplomatic skills.

Likewise, companies should manage their standards

activities very carefully; this includes whom to send

to which body. For instance, it may not always be

advisable to send R&D people who may tend to

push their brainchildren rather than support the

corporate strategy.

Unfortunately, whatever they do will hardly

guarantee success – we are dealing with the human

nature here …..

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SHAPING STANDARDS - People and Voting Rights and the Case of IEEE 802.111

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