Standardisation is increasingly seen as a means to insert ethics in innovation processes. We examine the institutionalisation of responsible innovation in de jure standardisation as this is an important but unexplored research area. In de jure standardisation, stakeholders collaborate in committees to develop standards. We adopt the anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity, and responsiveness responsible innovation framework as our theoretical lens. Our study suggests that responsible standardisation processes should embody forms of these four dimensions. We investigate the institutionalisation of these dimensions and identify 96 factors that can motivate, hinder, or facilitate responsible standardisation. Factors were found through in-depth interviews with managers of a standard developing organisation. These are subsequently validated/rejected using surveys completed by committee representatives. The results suggest that the social desirability of standards is not self-evident. This study could pave the way for future research on responsible standardisation processes, complementing research on legitimacy, responsible innovation, and standardisation.
Responsible Innovation has recently been taken up in public policies and discourses. However, it remains challenging to institutionalise its core dimensions -inclusion, anticipation, responsiveness, reflexivity, and transparency -in practice. De jure standardisation is increasingly seen as an instrument to embed the core principles of Responsible Innovation in innovation processes, because of its anticipatory and inclusive nature. Yet, Responsible Innovation within the standardisation literature is an under-researched field of study. This paper explores and evaluates the relative importance of Responsible Innovation's core dimensions in the standards development process. We identify eighteen criteria that are deemed essential to the quality of standardisation processes. The Best-Worst Method was used to rank these criteria on their perceived importance. Diversity of participation was found to be the most important contributing factor to the quality of standardisation.
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