The engagement in standardization

Policy-makers recognize standardization as a useful tool for competitiveness. However, not all firms are engaged in the standardization process. Moreover, the attitude of firms towards standardization within the company has not yet been investigated in a large quantitative study. Distinguishing between external formal standardization (e.g. participating in CEN, ISO) and internal company standardization (e.g. elaboration of company standards), this paper aims to cover this gap and contribute to on-going research about the factors explaining the standardization attitude of firms. A multinomial logit model is implemented to investigate simultaneously the choice of standardization strategies with respect to internal and external dimensions. The econometric analysis has been performed on a dataset representative of the whole economy obtained from merging Luxembourgish Community Innovation Survey 2010 and the list of firms contributing to Luxemburgish Standardization Institute.