Government coordination of conflicting interests in standardisation: case studies of indigenous ICT standards in China and South Korea

Abstract

An increasing number of locally developed technologies have been globalising, and latecomers like China or South Korea are active in setting their national technology as international standards. This study presents five cases of information and communications technology (ICT) standardisation by China and South Korea and examines their promotion of indigenous technologies as international standards. International standardisation involves complicated networks of domestic and global stakeholders with different interests. Good coordination is therefore required. We identify differences and similarities among the cases and discuss implications. From the case studies, we find that coordination with foreign players is more critical than coordination with domestic players in determining the path and consequences of standardisation projects. Our analysis of the two countries’ standardisation efforts explores lessons to policymakers and firms in other latecomer countries in respect to promoting local technologies into the global market.

Keywords:

• standardisation
• information and communication technology
• latecomer
• role of government
• coordination of interests
• China
• South Korea

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (KRF-2008-327-B00383).

Notes

In other words, one party benefits from standardisation at the expense of others. Gaining standards is no guarantee that additional value will be evenly captured among the firms in related industries within the country. We appreciate one of the referees who helped us understand the need to express this point explicitly.

See Figure 1. Indicators such as conflict duration and intensity were coded independently by the first and second authors and were discussed if differences were found in order to reach an agreement.

While AVS is a multimedia technology, the remaining four are mobile technologies. As noted by a reviewer, industry and/or technology characteristics may influence outcomes. However, our comparative observations of the five cases did not find noticeable differences among these.

The description of WIPI in this part is updated from Lee and Oh (2008).

Each country may have its own technical regulations and product standards for several reasons such as safety and culture. However, the existence of too many different regulations and standards creates complications for producers and exporters. Furthermore, they can be used as an excuse to protect domestic markets. The WTO Agreement on TBT tries to ensure that regulations, standards, testing and certification procedures do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade (WTO 2010).

KTF was merged to Korea Telecom in 2009.

The description of WAPI in this part is updated from Lee and Oh (2008).

The description of TD-SCDMA in this part is updated from Lee, Chan, and Oh (2009).

The authors are thankful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this issue to our attention.