The Roles of Standardization, Certification, and Assurance Services in Global Commerce

Two of the major problems that permeate complex modern production and distribution enterprises are coordination and enforcement. While mechanisms of coordination have been studied extensively in management science and organizational economics, issues raised by the second set of problems have been the focus of microeconomic theory, organizational economics, and law, especially property, contract and business entity law (e.g., North, 1990). At least two major mechanisms of enforcement of business and commercial understandings and agreements - legal contracts, and the organization of activities within firms - have been studied at considerable length by scholars in the law and economics tradition (e.g., Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1975). More recently, a third cluster of mechanisms, including norms and reputation, have become an object of study by economists and legal scholars (Richman, 2004; Bernstein, 1996; Bernstein, 1992; Bernstein, 2001; Grief, 1989).