We do make a distinction between self-identified VSCs and VSCs
sanctioned by formal standard bodies.
In this survey, we focus on self-identified VSCs, who are less
influential and face more uncertainties and rivalries in the market,
compared to VSCs sanctioned by formal standard bodies. We are interested
in understanding how these self-organizing VSCs work.
3. Why did you not clarify
the nature of standards of interest to you? The survey seems to be
geared for standards about data and information. There certainly are
standards and VSC's that address standards for people, for processes,
for hardware, etc.
We
are interested in e-business standards that delineate format of
electronic data and information communication between firms within a
particular industry. We choose to focus on e-business standard because:
(1) they are vital to electronic commerce, which is our primary research
interest; (2) standard users play a key role in the standard development
and diffusion; (3) e-business standards bring less competition among
standard adopters, compared to IT product standards such as DVD
standards.
4. Why did you not offer a list of the
VSC's of interest to you? You may well have data analysis problems due
to the same VSC being identified under different names or different
spellings, etc. You may have many VSCs with limited numbers of replies.
Did you not have a target list of VSC's in mind to study?
We
do have a target list of VSC’s. We are contacting VSCs that develop
e-business standards and have a sufficient number of members. Currently,
we have contacted two VSCs, OGC in the geospatial industry and STAR in
the auto retail industry. We are contacting the following VSCs to
distribute our survey among their members: ACORD in the insurance
industry, MISMO in the mortgage industry, RosettaNet in the high-tech
industry, OTA in the travel industry, and HL7 in the healthcare
industry. For any
other VSC that is interested in participating our research project, we
will be thrilled to collaborate with you.
5. Why did you not create
more questions about the nature of the standards developed by the VSC?
Standards can exist in so many varieties and dimensions and forms.
Generalizing across standards, per se, is not necessarily very
meaningful.
The
key research question pursued by this survey is “factors that motivate
or hinder firms’ participation in e-business VSCs”. We want to help VSCs
to identify ways to improve members’ involvement and satisfaction. We
also hope to find ways for firms to better utilize their VSC membership.
We think in general, the usefulness and importance of the standard, not
the specific nature of the standard, will determine firms’ motivation to
invest in the VSC. Therefore, we only ask general questions about the
nature of the standards.
If you have different opinions, please do share with us. It will help us
better understand the standardization phenomenon.
6. Why did you not create
more questions about the sponsorship of the standardization efforts and
the carry through of the VSC beyond producing 'paper' specifications to
initial deployment and adoption all the way to full marketplace
saturation?
The
current paper focuses on the development phase of the VSC. Two years
ago, we have conducted a survey asking questions about deployment and
adoption of e-business standards developed by VSC. Please feel free to
contact us if you are interested in our previous survey results, we are
more than happy to share our findings with our survey participants.
7. The site indicated that we
can receive a summary of the results. Is it possible to receive more
than a summary?
Yes,
if you are interested in our research project, we can share more details
with you in addition to a summary. We just began our date collection
process. We hope to collect sufficient replies from multiple targeted
VSCs during the summer. Once we finish our research project, we will
inform all survey participants.
Feel free to ask any
questions related to the survey. We will provide you as much information
as we can.