Acceptance of Chinese latecomers' technological contributions in international ICT standardization — the role of origin, experience and collaboration

As technical standards are an important part of China's industrial transformation towards an innovation-driven economy, Chinese organizations have started to deploy substantial resources in recent years to take on a leading role in international ICT standardization. However, many Chinese organizations experience, similar to other latecomers to standardization, limited success when contributing to standardization processes, a phenomenon also referred to as the standardization gap. The literature on standardization to date has paid little attention to how Chinese latecomers enter and influence international standardization processes that have traditionally been shaped by organizations from industrialized countries. We therefore analyze the country-of-origin effect as well as factors such as experience and collaboration for successful contributions of Chinese organizations to standards. Using data from the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and binary logistic regression analysis, we are able to show that, in our sample, contributions from Chinese latecomers are significantly less likely to be accepted than those from more established actors from industrialized economies. Moreover, our findings indicate that experience is closely associated with success in international ICT standardization, but not moderated by national origin. Therefore, Chinese latecomers might not be able to catch up if they move at the same pace as established competitors. They need to find a way to leapfrog extensive development steps, narrow the standardization capability gap, and thus strengthen their participation and influence. One way to do so might be through strategic collaboration, as our results suggest that Chinese organizations benefit more from collaborating with organizations from more established regions than vice versa, on which we call for further research to establish the causal mechanisms.