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2005
Conference Paper
Titel
Factors influencing the lifetime of telecommunication and information technology standards: Results of an explorative analysis of the PERINORM database
Abstract
This paper presents first explorative results of the study focusing on the lifetimes of formal standards in telecommunication and information technology. The analyses reveal heterogenous lifetimes among technological areas, which can be explained by the dynamic development of technologies. However, we also find institutional differences based on very country-specific characteristics. In a second step, we tried to identify factors influencing the lifetimes of standards. For example, the document-specific information on predecessor and successor documents confirm, on the one hand, for the majority of countries and technological sub-areas that standards which replace a preceding document have a longer survival time compared to documents without a predecessor. On the other hand, standards with a successor document have as anticipated a shorter expected lifetime. More consistent is the observation that the increased speed of technological change reduces the lifetimes of standards. Based on these first insights, standardisation bodies should adapt their standard maintenance according to the specific requirements of technologies and the related markets, but should also homogenise their processes in order to avoid frictions for the development of technologies and markets.