Over-Conformity with Standards at MedTech
This chapter presents a case of a medical technology company where standards have already shaped software development processes for a long time. Ronny Gey, Sarah Langer, and Andrea Fried reflect here on how MedTech’s organizational members over-conform with standards. In contrast to CraneSolutions in the previous chapter, productive asymmetries and even contradictions were hardly found in standard enactment at MedTech. MedTech provides adequate allocative and authoritative resources for standardization, refers to strong internal and external sanctioning systems for standard deviations, but hardly reflects on the internal effects of standards on software development. The case described in this chapter delivers an explanation why over-commitment of organizational members to standards tends to reinforce organizational inertia and shows the importance of reflexive handling of standard-induced requirements within the organization. This chapter represents one of the two commitment-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.