14.1 Introduction
Recent years have witnessed geopolitical tensions resulting from China’s rapid ascension to technological power. The increasing technological influence of Chinese companies is particularly apparent in the development of global technology standards in information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT standards codify specifications for interoperability among various technological components and prescribe methods applied in electronic devises;Footnote 1 notable examples include wireless LAN specifications, internet protocols, and cellular networks such 4G/LTE and, more recently, 5G.
Influence over the development of ICT standards is potentially highly valuable to commercial stakeholders – inclusion into a standard may increase the value of certain patented technologies;Footnote 2 and standard specifications may provide certain firms’ products with a competitive advantage. Competition for leadership in ICT standards development has thus long been characterized by rivalry between large commercial stakeholders. At the same time, and with the significantly increasing participation of Chinese companies in many standards development organizations (SDO), there is a growing geopolitical dimension to this commercial competition.
Particularly in the United States, the important role of Chinese companies, most notably Huawei, in ICT standards development has fueled a variety of policy initiatives intended to curb the influence of Chinese actors and bolster the position of US stakeholders in international standardization. To illustrate, US government officials have testified that the increasing number of SDO leadership positions held by Huawei affiliates may enable the adoption of standards that disadvantage the market position of US companies.Footnote 3 The growing representation of Chinese companies in SDOs was also discussed in the proposals for the recent US Innovation and Competition Act.Footnote 4 More recently, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been tasked to study and provide recommendations with respect to the effect of China’s standardization policies on, and the engagement of Chinese stakeholders in, international SDOs, especially those developing standards for emerging technologies.Footnote 5
These policy initiatives furthermore take place in the context of allegations that Huawei and other Chinese technology companies may present risks to US national security interests. In this light, some Western countries, including the United States, adopted a number of restrictive measures, ranging from the bans on (telecommunications) equipment supplied by Chinese manufacturers and that pose a threat to national security,Footnote 6 to Huawei’s listing on the US Export Administration Regulation (EAR) entity list, prohibiting it from supplying components for essential communications infrastructure.Footnote 7 Also these tensions have not gone unnoticed in SDOs, not least because restrictions on the exchange of technical information with entities on the EAR entity list may preclude Huawei’s affiliates from taking part in certain activities of the standardization process.Footnote 8
It has long been recognized that ICT standards can have significant political implications and can be used as tools of national or regional industrial policy.Footnote 9 Leadership in the development of international ICT standards may thus provide opportunities for “regulatory export,” a strategy of promoting the international diffusion of domestic regulations. It is thus not surprising that policymakers view the possibility of Chinese stakeholders acquiring significant influence over ICT standards development as a particular cause for concern.
In this chapter, we argue that the tensions that result from China’s, and in particular, Huawei’s increasing representation in standardization processes, as well as the policy reactions that they generated, create “a moment of stress”Footnote 10 for the normal functioning of SDOs. In addition to causing frictions in the daily business of SDOs, these dynamics challenge seemingly well-established governance principles of the standardization ecosystem.
Scholarly commentary has highlighted institutional features of SDOs, such as the openness and transparency of technical deliberations, the representation of a wide diversity of interests, and the fact that technical decisions are reached by consensus,Footnote 11 which seem to counter the suggestion that certain Chinese stakeholders may exercise undue influence within these SDOs to negatively affect US national security interests. Nevertheless, the recent tensions around increasing Chinese participation in SDOs expose fragilities in the existing norms of SDO governance. All this calls for an empirical analysis of SDOs’ governance processes to better assess these organizations’ aptitude to adapt to the present situation of institutional crisis.
This chapter aims to advance the understanding of the current power dynamics in SDOs by explaining the rules, processes, and traditions of four global SDOs, namely: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The reasons for selecting these SDOs are the following: firstly, they span across the spectrum of SDO governance models, ranging from an intergovernmental agency to an informal group of internet experts. Secondly, they have recently sparked off the debates regarding the increasing role of Huawei, and Huawei’s affiliates, in their standardization decisions. In particular, our analysis focuses on the rules for leadership appointments and expected conducts of individuals holding critical positions in SDOs. In a broader sense, this chapter contributes to the debate on the neutrality, independence, and trustworthiness of SDOs in the light of the global commercial and geopolitical rivalry in the ICT sector.
14.2 The Rise of China and Huawei as Global Technology Leaders
Over the past few years, participation by Chinese individuals and organizations in international ICT standards development has significantly increased.Footnote 12 Two factors have contributed to this evolution: first, the fast growth of the Chinese ICT industry and, second, structural and institutional changes in China’ national industrial and technology policy,Footnote 13 often categorized as an evolving process of “techno-nationalism.”Footnote 14 Chinese industrial policy had long sought to reduce dependence of China’s companies on foreign technologies through the development of indigenous alternatives to Western standards, for example, for 3G (TD-SCDMA) and 4G (TD-LTE) technology.Footnote 15, Footnote 16 Current Chinese standardization policy by contrast incentivizes Chinese stakeholders to participate in the development of international technology standards:Footnote 17 the recent “China Standards 2035” initiative, for instance, encourages Chinese stakeholders to lead the development of global standards for critical telecommunications technologies as well as for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.Footnote 18
It is against this backdrop that the aforementioned claims of China’s increasing influence in SDO processes arise. However, for any further discussion regarding the resilience of these processes, it is important to assess these concerns in light of empirical evidence.
14.2.1 Empirical Evidence on Chinese and Huawei’s Participation in SDOs
Our data suggests that the increasing Chinese participation in international SDOs is reflected in a general increase in the share of Chinese individuals among attendees of international SDOs, such as 3GPP, IEEE-SA 802.11, and IETF.Footnote 19 Nevertheless, individuals from Western countries continue to represent a significant majority of the attendees in each of these SDOs (Figure 14.1).
Trends in SDO meeting attendance
Earlier studies demonstrated that increasing Chinese participation in SDOs has translated into an increasing share of Chinese stakeholders in SDO leadership positions, most notably in the intergovernmental ITU,Footnote 20 where it has also introduced a large number of standardization proposals.Footnote 21 In the past decade, the number of Chinese stakeholders holding secretariat positions in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) technical committees has increased by nearly 70 percent.Footnote 22 However, the recent number of leadership positions held by Chinese stakeholders in the technical bodies of ISO and IEC seems not have increased dramatically or even declined, despite the fact that China has undertaken new chair positions and secretariats in these SDOs.Footnote 23
A similar observation can be made from our data: at 3GPP, IETF, and IEEE 802.11, the share of Chinese individuals among SDO working group chairs significantly trails the share of Chinese among attendees, demonstrating no disproportionate representation of Chinese individuals in the leadership of these three SDOs (Figure 14.2).
Trends in chairs appointments of SDO meeting
One must note, however, that most policy discussions focus specifically on Huawei. In this regard, our empirical evidence suggests that while individuals from Europe and North America are affiliated with many different organizations, the affiliations of SDO participants from China are significantly more concentrated, with Huawei holding a disproportionate share. As a consequence, Huawei was, in the most recent years, the single affiliation with the largest number of attendees in each of these SDOs. Similar to other large companies, Huawei affiliates are generally over-represented in working group chair positions (Figure 14.3).
Meeting attendance and chair appointments of five largest stakeholders in 3GPP, IEEE, OneM2M, and IETF
Furthermore, in different SDOs, Huawei-affiliated individuals have been appointed to particularly influential roles. In ITU, this included the chair of important committees, such as ITU-T SG16 on AI-enabled multimedia applications and ITU-T Focus Groups on AI standardization.Footnote 24 Individuals affiliated with Huawei or associated companies have also been nominated for the IETF chair election in 2021.Footnote 25
The empirical evidence also suggests that Huawei is not unique in holding large numbers of leadership roles in these SDOs. At 3GPP, Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm also hold larger number of leadership positions; while at IETF, Cisco continues to hold a leading position both in terms of attendance records and chair positions. Empirically, what sets Huawei apart from its main competitors is the breadth of Huawei’s engagement – Huawei’s lead in attendance records in the three SDOs marks the first time that one company leads attendance counts in each of these SDOs. Furthermore, the observable data point to future increases in Huawei’s position in SDO leadership: as Huawei affiliates attend SDO meetings more assiduously than affiliates of any other company, and Huawei recruited far larger numbers of individuals with previous SDO participation experience than any other company,Footnote 26 Huawei is growing a workforce with significant SDO experience. Having this experience is the most important predictor of future appointments to SDO chair positions.
14.2.2 Huawei’s Rise as a Moment of Stress for SDO Governance
The observable pattern of Huawei’s increasing influence in ICT SDOs alone does not constitute an institutional crisis. Several concerns and/or allegations have been raised, which suggest that Huawei’s rise represents a challenge to the (current) normal functioning of international SDOs.
First, governmental support of Chinese companies, arguably enabling them to gain competitive advantages in SDOs, is accused of interfering with the competitive process.Footnote 27 Second, the increasing role of Chinese stakeholders, coupled with generally lower standards of patent protection in China, is often presented as a threat to the protection of Western companies’ patent rights.Footnote 28 Third, Huawei and other Chinese stakeholders are seen as promoting certain governance models for the development of ICT standards. To illustrate, Huawei-driven attempts at the ITU to reform the Internet with the “New IP” protocol have been presented as a challenge not only to IETF’s traditional prerogative over the development of internet protocols but more generally to a nongovernmental, de-centralized, multi-stakeholder model of standards development and internet governance.Footnote 29
In addition to these specific issues, concerns about China’s and Huawei’s influence in SDOs unfold against the background of a broader discussion on China’s role in the global economic order. ICT standardization, for example, in the field of Artificial Intelligence, carries complex ethical implications;Footnote 30 and some ICT standards, including 5G, define the performance and resilience of a critical communications infrastructure.Footnote 31 In this context, several policy discussions around China’s and/or Huawei’s leading role in ICT standards development, and the telecommunications infrastructure more generally, focus on potential risks to national security interests, human rights, or political values; as exemplified by multiple cybersecurity incidents allegedly linked to HuaweiFootnote 32 and unease about the leading role of Chinese stakeholders in the development of international facial recognition standards.Footnote 33
The US policy response to these (perceived) threats to the SDO ecosystem can equally be seen as menacing the normal functioning of SDOs. The exclusion of certain entities from relevant standardization activities and adjacent forms of technology exchange represents a departure from the general principle of openness of the standards development process. Ultimately, it also risks splintering the technical and governance structure of international ICT standardization. Furthermore, at least some of the measures contemplated in the United States in order to counter Chinese influence in international SDOs can themselves be perceived as interference of a national government with the normal competitive process in private international SDOs.
14.2.3 Fragility of Existing Norms of SDO Governance
The recent tensions around China’s and Huawei’s increasing participation in the leadership of SDOs developing international ICT standards constitute a “moment of stress” for SDO governance, as both the rising influence of Huawei (and some other Chinese stakeholders) itself as well as the policy response (especially in the United States) to this ascension can be seen as challenging certain institutional norms and governance principles of SDOs.
ICT standardization is characterized by rivalry between different commercial stakeholders with vested interests in influencing the outcomes of standardization processes; it also involves considerable R&D investments. In this highly competitive setting, most SDOs emerge as nongovernmental, nonprofit, voluntary professional and/or industry associations that provide an infrastructure for neutral and nonpartisan deliberation processes. The primary aim of this particular institutional organization of the deliberative process is to promote technical objectivity in standardization decisions.
It is an accepted (and often expected) feature of SDOs that most or all individual participants of the standards development process vigorously pursue different interests. By contrast, it is a violation of institutional norms of standardization if the SDO itself or its agents or representatives side with individual SDO stakeholders or constituencies.Footnote 34 From this vantage point, the resilience of the existing SDO ecosystem to the present “moment of stress” hinges on whether the rival commercial and political interests of Chinese and Western stakeholders fuel particularly vigorous competition within the nonpartisan standards development process or whether there is competition for opportunities to influence (and bias) the nature of the deliberative process.
Nevertheless, the supposedly well-established norms separating the partisan activity of SDO participation from the neutrality of the institutional setting are inherently fragile. There have been numerous episodes in which individual SDO chairs have been accused of favoring their company’s proposals or otherwise biasing the standardization process.Footnote 35 At several occasions, SDOs made decisions opposed by significant stakeholder constituencies, illustrated by the W3C Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) recommendations.Footnote 36 The notion of a competitive standards development process taking place within a nonpartisan process is also belied by the hyper-partisan nature of some SDO governance discussions, as illustrated by the latest update of IEEE’s patent policy and the still ongoing controversy that it has generated.Footnote 37
While appealing, the optimistic representation of the standards development process as a highly competitive process within a neutral institutional framework is thus overly simplistic. For a more thorough assessment of SDOs’ resilience to the present “moment of stress,” it is important to have a closer empirical look at SDOs’ institutional architecture and the drivers of their decision-making.
14.3 SDO Governance Processes
Next to a set of formal rules that define SDOs’ membership, voting rights, and obligations of SDO participants, the conduct of business within SDO committees hinges upon informal practices and expectations rooted in cultural historical traditions, which determine the hierarchy of operational rules and their interpretation. Furthermore, SDOs usually comprise many committees, which in turn are made up of specialized groups, each of these subcommittees having their own internal ways of working. In this regard, while there are different ways in which SDOs and their standards can be legitimized as instances of private rule-making,Footnote 38 it can also be argued that different SDO models present different legitimization techniques.
14.3.1 Models of SDO governance
SDO governance is heterogenous.Footnote 39 While SDOs appear to share some fundamental governance features, those are further concretized in their operational frameworks in a way that serves their membership and is entrenched in their cultural traditions. Generally, a distinction can be made between four models of SDO governance, often combined in reality.
In the first model, SDOs comprise national committees established at the country level and according to the national rules (“national representation”). This modus operandi is exemplified by the three international SDOs, namely the ISO, IEC, and ITU. National committees participating in these SDOs represent national consensus, as opposed to the interest of a particular stakeholder group. However, SDOs may have different understandings of what the “national consensus” entails: in ITU, for instance, it refers to the interests of States, whereas ISO and IEC are preliminary concerned with consensus among domestic industry actors.Footnote 40 SDOs that are based on national representation derive their legitimacy from recognition by governmental authorities, either explicit or by the indirect means of co-regulationFootnote 41 or, as it is the case with ITU, from participation of the public sector, that is, ministries and governmental agencies, in their standardization processes.Footnote 42 Furthermore, since the national committees are treated equally in terms of membership rights and obligations, such as voting for standards’ approval, this type of SDO also enjoys legitimacy from the perspective of the international standardization system.
The second governance model represents a global partnership of regional SDOs, such as the 3GPP and OneM2M. The rules and processes of these SDOs strive to strike a balance between the interests of private actors (“balance of commercial stakeholders”). Stakeholders participate in these partnerships by virtue of their organizational membership in regional SDOs. Adherence to the requirements of commercial and regional balance is the legitimizing force behind their standards, immunizing them, at least in theory, from undue commercial influence. This type of SDO furthermore enjoys increased legitimacy from the perspective of commercial stakeholders, since the voting rights are typically allocated according to stakeholders’ size and financial contribution to the SDO.Footnote 43
In contrast to the two entity-based governance models, SDOs designed according to the third governance model represent associations of professionals rooted in the traditions of democracy (“democracy of experts”). Individuals participating in these SDOs typically follow the norms of conduct of their profession but may also participate through their affiliation and represent the interests of their employer. An example of such an SDO is the Standards Association of the Institute of the Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-SA). Standards developed in these SDOs are largely legitimized by their inclusive processes, which seek to provide equal opportunities for all members to voice their opinion, for instance, through the democratic election of SDO leadership. To enhance their legitimacy, such SDOs may also seek formal accreditation of their processes or standards by an organization in the highest hierarchical position, such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or JTC1, which transposes public law requirements imposed on these national and global standards bodies to these private-sector associations.
The fourth and last model is even more centered on individuals and represents “informal groups of likeminded experts”: IETF, which started as a loosely organized group of internet researchers and to this day operates without formal membership requirements, is a vivid example of this governance model. Although some of these consortia have pledged the alignment of their processes with public law principles for standardization governance,Footnote 44 they usually do not seek formal recognition or accreditation at the higher hierarchical level.Footnote 45 Their legitimacy is exclusively derived from meritocracy and free participation of all interested individuals, regardless of their affiliation: more often than not, such SDOs would require individuals to refrain from representing the position of their employer as a vital requirement to the independence of the SDO.
14.3.2 Integrity of SDO Processes of Different Governance Models
The governance models discussed above generally demonstrate two different approaches to ICT standardization. Under the first approach, standardization decisions should reflect a consensus of those affected by the standard; standardization processes should therefore be open to the relevant stakeholders and seek a balance of the different stakeholder groups and assure sufficient representation of different types of interests. SDOs adhering to these principles may give greater weight to stakeholders with a larger stake in the standard, assess consensus within different categories of interests, and/or encourage participation of representatives of specific underrepresented interest categories. Under the second approach, standardization decisions should reflect a technical consensus among subject matter experts. SDOs operating following this approach seek to be open to any interested individual expert, expect their participants to take technical decisions on merit, and often discourage individuals to represent the interests of a particular stakeholder. Such approach is traditionally maintained in internet governance,Footnote 46 which is also illustrated by the IETF’s requirement for experts to participate in the individual capacity rather than represent their employer.
While impartiality and independence of SDOs has gained attention in the recent scholarly and political discussions,Footnote 47 an element that has been neglected in these debates is the interplay of different motives and incentives shaping individuals’ conduct in SDO committees. Irrespective of governance models, stakeholders participate in SDO processes by sending individual employees to attend their meetings. Furthermore, since SDOs have limited staff, their administrative and management functions – including editors and working group chairs, as well as the members of appeals boards, policy committees, and other governance bodies – are filled by volunteers who are often affiliated with private companies. Hence, the impartiality of the standardization process depends on the decisions of individuals employed by organizations with direct stakes in the SDOs’ decisions.
The individual dimension of SDO participation is quintessential, since it provides insights on decision-making within the standards body and its committees, revealing some fundamental accountability questions that are not always evident on the surface, including the following: who are the main decision-makers, how are they appointed, and what are their obligations towards the membership. The role of individuals is especially critical in a highly competitive environment, such as ICT standardization: experts sitting on the committees may wear different hats and have contradictory commitments to their employer, peers, or profession. Against this backdrop, understanding how individuals are selected to SDO leadership is an important facet through which the integrity and independence of different SDO governance models can be examined.
14.4 Formal Rules of SDO Leadership Selection
By far the most important and common leadership function in SDOs is the role of a working group chair. Individuals holding these positions have weighty responsibility but also considerable power: they coordinate the work of the respective working group, serve as the first stage of appeal or investigation processes into the breaches of SDOs’ procedural rules, and make pivotal decisions such as whether consensus has been achieved or the voting should be conducted. In some cases, chairs may delay or even stall their working groups’ discussion.Footnote 48 A position of a chair may thus be highly advantageous for companies actively participating in standards development and exert a significant influence on the outcome of standardization decisions; at the same time, since chairs serve as tie-breakers, they are critical to balancing the interests and ensuring impartiality of SDO processes.Footnote 49 Furthermore, pursuant to the established jurisprudence, decisions of chairs are attributable to an SDO and may thus entail legal responsibility for the organization,Footnote 50 which will also affect SDO membership.
Each SDO has its own rules for election or appointment of its leadership that are entrenched in historical traditions and have evolved due to the membership expansion and the emerging jurisprudence.Footnote 51 This section reviews the rules of the four prominent ICT SDOs that apply to the conduct of working groups’ chairs, including their appointment, tenure, and resignation, in the light of the overall institutional rules and traditions of these organizations.
14.4.1 ITU
Formally, holding leadership positions in ITU Study GroupsFootnote 52 does not confer the individuals with any influence over standards development. This however contradicts the fact that chairs are tasked with maintaining the order in their committees, authorizing the voting as a “last resort” where consensus by the means of “sound out” cannot be achieved, ruling on motions, and suspending meetings.Footnote 53 While seeking the balance is not explicitly listed as a chair’s responsibility, they are required to protect the rights of each member’s representative.
Officials for ITU Study Groups, including chairs and vice-chairs, are appointed the Sector Assembly (e.g., the WTSA for the ITU Standardization Sector). Each member state’s and Sector member’s delegation nominates their candidate(s) for chairs and vice-chairs by consensus; the list of nominees, including their resumes and qualifications, is then circulated among the Sector membership and is made available on the ITU website.Footnote 54 When appointing the officials, the Sector Assembly should take into account individuals’ personal competences, equitable geographical distribution, and the need to promote more efficient participation by the developing countries;Footnote 55 the individuals’ professional knowledge and expertise, managerial skills, candidates’ and their administration’s commitment to fulfill the duties of the Study Group officials, as well as individual’s prior experiences as rapporteurs or editors and continuous participation in Study or Advisory groups, also counts.Footnote 56 Members are discouraged from nominating candidates who failed to participate in at least half of all meetings in the prior study period. In case the nominees’ qualifications are equal, preference is given to members with lowest number of chairs. Members cannot nominate candidates for chairs and vice-chairs for the same Study Group to safeguard geographical distribution; moreover, the appointment of vice-chairs is limited to three candidates from each region, but the ultimate number of vice-chairs appointed per Study Group depends on equitable distribution as well as the workload.
To allow introducing new ideas on a periodic basis and to provide opportunities to different States, Study Group chairs are appointed for a limited time and with a maximum tenure of two terms.Footnote 57 For the sake of continuity, this term does not count for another appointment, meaning that a Study Group’s chairman can be appointed as the group’s vice-chairman and vice-versa.Footnote 58 However, no individual can hold more than one vice chairmanship.
14.4.2 3GPP
Working Group chairs of 3GPP are responsible for the management of their committees, and their compliance with the prescribed processes, and are required to maintain impartiality and act in the interests of 3GPP when performing their leadership tasks.Footnote 59 Working Group officials are tasked with formulating the questions put forward for voting as well as with maintaining impartiality in the Working Group.Footnote 60 Furthermore, chairs determine when consensus is reached and may impose voting or temporary arrangements in case consensus is not achieved.Footnote 61 At the beginning of each meeting, the chair is required to make a statement of antitrust compliance and call for IPRs;Footnote 62 for a short period of time in 2019, the chair was also required to make a statement of compliance with the US EARs.Footnote 63
The Working Group officials are elected by the members of the respective Working Group every two years.Footnote 64 Candidates for (vice)-chairmanship should provide a letter of support from the 3GPP member, which should also assure the candidate’s compliance with antitrust rules if elected for the office.Footnote 65 In an endeavor to maintain balance, a Working Group’s chair and vice-chair, as well as their successive officials, cannot be from the same region, organizations, partner, or group of companies, unless no other individual is available to hold the office.Footnote 66 If more than one candidate is nominated for the chair position, the election of Working Groups’ officials occurs through secret balloting, with a threshold of 71 percent of Working Groups members voting and present; if the processes is unsuccessful, it is followed by a second ballot between the candidates obtaining the highest amount of votes.Footnote 67 Individuals can be reelected as Working Group chairs for the second term, and exceptionally, their tenure in the office can last even longer; there are no restrictions for the election of chairs whose tenure is due to expire as vice-chairs and vice-versa.Footnote 68
An incumbent chairman or vice-chairman who changes their affiliation, for instance, due to taking up new employment, is required to present a new letter of support from their new employer. If affiliation is changed due to the individual’s hiring by another company, and not their company’s merger or acquisition, the Working Group should also agree by consensus that the individual can remain in their role as a (vice-)chair.Footnote 69 When a chair is believed not to effectively perform their duties, their dismissal can be requested by 30 percent of a Working Group in a secret ballot, with 71 percent of votes considered as recommending the dismissal. Furthermore, if a Working Group member doubts the chair’s impartiality and believes the chair does not act in the interest of 3GPP, they should object to the chair’s decision and request that the objection is recorded, prior to taking the issue to the PCG.Footnote 70 (Vice-)chairs can be dismissed through a secret vote of the Working Groups when they fail to effectively perform their duties.Footnote 71
14.4.3 IEEE-SA
IEEE-SA Working Group chairs provide leadership and guidance and serve as a contact point for questions or comments regarding standardization activity. Their main task is to move the Working Group forward while ensuring that every voice has been heard and that the rules and procedures of the working groups are respected.Footnote 72 In carrying out their activities, chairs need to be objective, refrain from making motions and strive to balance the interests in their Working Group. The chair is also in power to determine the Working Group’s participants and is (almost) the only official who holds control over distributing the draft standard.Footnote 73
IEEE Study Groups officials, including chairs and mentors, are appointed by the Sponsor committee – a body that provides oversight for the working groups’ activities. Once assigned, the Study Group chair can further appoint the secretary who is charged with record keeping and contacting Study Group members; yet it remains the task of the chair to distribute the call for participation in a Study Group.Footnote 74 IEEE Working Groups chairs are either appointed by a standards committee or elected by the respective Working Group; in the latter case, the official should be confirmed by the sponsor.Footnote 75 Procedures for officials’ election, as well as the definition of what constitutes a consensus, are further specified in the Working Group’s charters; for instance, chairs of the IEEE-SA 802.11 Working Group, responsible for the development of WLAN specifications, including Wi-Fi, are elected biannually from the nominated individuals, following a debate in the biannual working group, upon receiving a simple majority of cast votes.Footnote 76
While there is no specification of the qualities and skills crucial for the chairs (presumably because those are left to Study and Working groups), it is required that the Working Groups’ chairs hold the membership of both IEEE and IEEE-SA, which implies that by the virtue of individual IEEE membership, they should be familiar to and with the SDO. There is no overarching requirement for a maximum term of office: chairs may either serve limited terms or undergo a regular vote confirmation.Footnote 77
14.4.4 IETF
IETF Working Group chairs are the formal contact point of their Working Group and IETF governance bodies and other SDOs. Chairs preside over the Working Group meetings, manage its activities and publications, accept or reject participants’ input, and decide whether a draft recommendation is to be published as an official Working Group draft;Footnote 78 they also moderate mailing lists, prepare face-to-face sessions, and serve as a first stage of conflict resolution. They have a wide discretion in administering Working Group activities and may also make decisions on behalf of their Working Group, where they may be assisted by the area directors – individuals in charge of a particular domain of IETF activities.Footnote 79 Chairs are also responsible for deciding when and whether consensus between the group members is reached,Footnote 80 which can be particularly challenging in the absence of formal voting and when most of the meetings occur through the mailing list. Crucially, chairs should balance “progress and fairness” and ensure that the Working Groups move forward while the process remains fair and open.Footnote 81
IETF Working Group chairs are assigned by the area directors who in turn are selected by the nominating committee (NomCom), whose members are randomly selected from a pool of volunteers and approved by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).Footnote 82 While both technical and communication skills of a chair candidate matter, individuals who have been around in IETF for a long time and have been actively participating in its meetings are more likely to get appointed as chairs, especially if they gained “favorable prominence”Footnote 83 by having previously contributed to the documents or volunteered to review them.
IETF chairs’ neutrality and impartiality has been challenged on a number of occasions, including allegations of abuse of power and breaching fairness and neutrality of IETF processes by favoring solutions preferred by the chairs’ affiliation.Footnote 84 Interestingly, at least in these instances, the IETF appeal bodies did not find any evidence of conflict of interest stemming from the individuals’ affiliation,Footnote 85 illustrating two important elements of IETF leadership: first, the high level of trust in independent and unbiased judgment of chairs and, second, the chairs’ wide prerogative for moving forward the discussions in the working groups.
14.4.5 Takeaways from Analyzing the Rules for Leadership Appointment
Even though the four studied SDOs are rooted in different historical traditions, we can observe some similarities and differences in their rules for leadership appointment. The distinction between entity-based and individual-based governance models is particularly striking: as illustrated with the examples of ITU and 3GPP, entity-based SDOs devote particular attention to the balance in their leadership composition with such aspects as regional and commercial diversity and non-transferability of chairs’ positions.Footnote 86 Likewise, the employers’ formal and explicit support plays a significant role when selecting or appointing the chairs in these two organizations. Contrarily, the rules for leadership appointment in individual-based SDOs such as IEEE and IETF rely on the culture of meritocracy, rather than on balance of interests, and do not require any type of support from the officials’ employers or affiliations.
At the same time, surveying procedural rules demonstrates the importance of experience and expertise in all four SDOs. This is apparent from the conditions that candidate-chairs have to fulfill regarding, for example, meeting attendance, knowledge and experience in the organization, and compliance with SDOs’ antitrust policies. In both entity and individual-based organizations, chairs are always required to participate in an individual capacity and have a fiduciary duty to the SDO (although admittedly, whether or not the chairs indeed respect fiduciary duty is difficult to verify).
14.5 Legal and Institutional Dimensions of SDO Leadership
The institutional analysis suggests different approaches to legitimacy of SDO leadership, which correspond to the contrast between “commercial balance” and “meritocracy” of entity- and individual-based SDOs respectively. Yet, despite the identified procedural differences, including such nuances as opportunities for reelection and the duration of tenure, both types of SDOs approach leadership in a similar way in the sense that they have certain behavioral and reputational expectations for individuals holding leadership positions, requiring them to set their personal preferences, or employers’ agenda, aside in the interest of the SDO. These nuances undoubtedly contribute to the checks and balances that different SDO models have in place, depending on these SDOs’ governance structure, culture, and membership.
The fact that the requirements of expertise and experience appear to be the main determinants for leadership appointments, regardless the SDO’s institutional setup, demonstrates a strong culture of individual independence and meritocracy. The “community of professionals” mobilized through this culture functions outside the SDOs’ organizational hierarchy or State-driven processes, evidencing the phenomenon of “voluntary economic activism.”Footnote 87
While these observations do not allow us to conclude which SDO type is better equipped in dealing with the situation of distress, they help in reflecting on the SDOs adaptive capacities. They also indicate that despite the presence of checks and balances in their governance models, SDOs are not immune to crises caused by the capture of their processes. To strengthen SDO resilience, revisiting leadership rules in terms of neutrality and independence is in order.
Furthermore, and without any pretense of exhaustiveness, our descriptive analysis of SDO leadership rules, interpreted through the previous empirical studies on participation in SDOs suggesting the increase of participation of Chinese companies in ITUFootnote 88 and the unchallenged supremacy of Western companies in 3GPP, IEEE, and IETF,Footnote 89 allows us to make some observations regarding the integrity of different SDO governance models but also their relevance for global standardization activities. It is commonly assumed that standards developed through intergovernmental bodies, such as ITU, enjoy increased legitimacy, which also facilitates their global dissemination. However, the role of ITU appears to be limited for the industry, and Western countries where standardization traditions are entrenched in the private sector prefer to streamline their standardization efforts in the industry-led SDOs rather than intergovernmental ITU.Footnote 90 Conversely, ITU is a preferred standards development platform for standardization newcomers and, in particular, Chinese companies, which arguably use ITU processes as an opportunity to promote their technologies in non-Western countries: for instance, ITU standards are adopted as regulatory policy in Africa and Asia,Footnote 91 while Huawei’s technologies are actively used in the development of smart cities on the African continent.Footnote 92
It is not entirely clear what served as a catalyst for this fragmentation. On the one hand, the global openness of ITU may have been the reason for Western States to resort to private organizations whose cultural traditions they are more comfortable with. On the other hand, the preference of Western industry for institutions with particular properties and their lack of interest in ITU may have created openings for emerging standardization stakeholders, which were quick to fill the vacant spots with their own standardization efforts. Most likely, these two phenomena are jointly determined. Regardless of their source, they indicate a serious lack of “openness” in terms of inclusiveness and geographical representativeness in SDO leadership.
Two perspectives emerge from this suggestion. The first one is the perspective of Western stakeholders, characterized by the growing distrust in ITU and concerns that its greater openness may allow for strategic national interests to prevail over commercial ones. These concerns go beyond ITU and are particularly relevant for the “national representation” governance model, since equal voting rights per national committee may not always correspond to the level of contribution to, or use of, their standards. Indeed, equal voting rights seem to facilitate achieving fairness and impartiality; in reality, however, precisely for this reason, this type of SDO is also extremely prone to lobbying and “packing the vote” strategies by the stronger stakeholders. Leadership of this type of SDO should be subjected to additional safeguards that ensure not only its diversity but also integrity and impartiality.
The second perspective is the one of non-Western stakeholders, and in particular Chinese actors whose participation in ICT standardization has surged only recently. From this potential viewpoint, industry-driven SDOs such as 3GPP, IEEE, and IETF exhibit bias toward Western stakeholders and a significant lack of diversity and global interest representation in their leadership. As this lack of diversity may render Western-driven SDOs increasingly less attractive for Asian stakeholders, these SDOs may also lose important technical contributions, which in turn may also affect standards implementation on the non-Western markets; the latter is especially worrisome given the current climate of techno-nationalism in countries such as China. In due course, this development may not only contribute to further fragmentation of ICT standards but also put into question the legitimacy of the global standardization ecosystem as well as these SDOs role as global standard-setters.
14.6 Conclusion
Huawei’s increasing influence in the global technological sector has generated various scholarly and policy discussions. With regard to standards development, the narrative shared by some Western policymakers and commercial actors is that through acquiring leadership positions in SDOs, Chinese stakeholders, particularly Huawei, may pave the way for SDO processes to become partisan towards China’s commercial and political strategic interests. However persistent, these concerns should be viewed in the light of the empirical evidence of Chinese and Huawei’s participation in SDOs and their representation in the critical positions in these institutions.
In this regard, the empirically observed pattern demonstrated that, currently, SDO leadership is still largely dominated by Western stakeholders. At the same time, the meeting attendance by individuals affiliated with Chinese stakeholders, and in particular Huawei, has been dramatically increasing. Hence, while concerns of Chinese stakeholders taking over SDO leadership are still premature, there is undisputable evidence of China’s and Huawei’s strategy to increase their presence in these SDOs. The question is then whether SDO processes can be trusted to address the arising concerns of a single group of stakeholders controlling their decision-making and whether SDO institutional framework will hold to the standards of neutrality and impartiality.
Our contribution addresses this question by discussing different SDO governance models, focusing in particular on the roles of individuals holding critical positions in four prominent SDOs. We demonstrate that, despite the strong institutional traditions of meritocracy and neutrality and the existent checks and balances of the different institutional frameworks, SDO leadership relies on the system where private interests are actively pursued through the incentives of individuals holding critical positions and is thus inherently fragile. To trust this institutional setup, we need to carefully consider how individuals that represent these institutions are selected and which institutional mechanisms are available to constrain their power over SDO decision-making. Despite the common, and rather optimistic belief, neutrality in standardization processes should not be taken for granted: further institutional and empirical analyses are at order to assess the resilience of SDOs to different types of crises.
Open access