Templates: Achieving Standardization for Business Networking

Abstract

Business in the information age depends to a large extend on the availability of accepted standards (see, for example, [OECD 1996]. They significantly reduce the coordination requirements between business partners and are the basis for establishing integrated information flows. The availability of Internet standards, such as HTML or TCP/IP, has been a main enabler in the evolution of electronic commerce (EC) since the early 1990s. In providing specifications for the interconnectivity of information systems, which stretch across system platforms and user communities, they allowed the integration of heterogeneous sectors within an economy. Generally, we can distinguish two main thrusts towards standardization: business requirements and technological integration [cf. Venkatraman 1991].