Responsible Innovation and De Jure Standardisation: An In-Depth Exploration of Moral Motives, Barriers, and Facilitators.

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.

How to Weigh Values in Value Sensitive Design: A Best Worst Method Approach for the Case of Smart Metering.

Proactively including the ethical and societal issues of new technologies could have a positive effect on their acceptance. These issues could be captured in terms of values. In the literature, the values stakeholders deem important for the development of technology have often been identified. However, the relative ranking of these values in relation to each other have not been studied often. The best worst method is proposed as a possible method to determine the weights of values, hence it is used in an evaluative fashion. The applicability of the method is tested by applying it to the case of smart meters, one of the main components of the smart grid. The importance of values is examined for three dimensions of acceptance namely sociopolitical, market, and household acceptance.

Standards adoption: A comprehensive multidisciplinary review.

The paper provides an overview of determinants for the adoption of standards; a topic on which little research has been done so far. An extensive review and systematic analysis was conducted of the papers that have published on the topic. This resulted in a framework with 18 factors for the adoption of standards divided into 5 categories. A distinction is made between factors for the adoption of compatibility standards and quality standards. Additional analysis have been performed investigating the completeness of the list of factors and the extent to which cross-fertilization occurs by authors that study the topic of standards adoption. The paper concludes with contributions, limitations and a future research agenda.

Towards renewable hydrogen-based electrolysis: Alkaline vs Proton Exchange Membrane.

This paper focuses on the battle for a dominant design for renewable hydrogen electrolysis in which the designs, alkaline and proton exchange membrane, compete for dominance. First, a literature review is performed to determine the most relevant factors that influence technology dominance. Following that, a Best Worst Method analysis is conducted by interviewing multiple industry experts. The most important factors appear to be: Price, Safety, Energy consumption, Flexibility, Lifetime, Stack size and Materials used. The opinion of experts on Proton Exchange Membrane and alkaline electrolyser technologies is slightly skewed in favour of alkaline technologies. However, the margin is too small to identify a winner in this technology battle. The following paper contributes to the ongoing research on modelling the process of technology selection in the energy sector.

Towards common ethical and safe 'behaviour' standards for automated vehicles.

Automated vehicles (AVs) aim to dramatically improve traffic safety by reducing or eliminating human error, which remains the leading cause of road crashes. However, commonly accepted standards for the 'safe driving behaviour of machines' are pending and urgently needed. Unless a common understanding of safety as a design value is achieved, different manufacturers' driving styles may emerge, resulting in inconsistent, unpredictable and potentially unsafe 'behaviour' of AVs in certain situations. This paper aims to explore the main gaps and challenges towards establishing shared safety standards for the 'behaviour' of AVs, and contribute to their responsible traffic integration, by reviewing the state-of-the-art on AV safety in the core relevant disciplines: ethics of technology, safety science (engineering & human factors), and standardisation. The ethical and safety aspects investigated include the users' perception of AV safety, the ethical trade-offs in critical decision-making contexts, the pertinence of data-driven approaches for AVs to mimic human behaviour, and the responsibilities of various actors. Moreover, the paper reviews the current safety patterns, metrics (surrogate measures of safety - SMoS) and their thresholds introduced in existing research for three use cases: mixed traffic of AV and conventional vehicles, AV interaction with pedestrians and cyclists, and transition of control from machine to human driver. The results reveal several knowledge gaps within each discipline and highlights the lack of common understanding of safety across disciplines. On the basis of the results, the paper proposes a framework for further research on AV safety, identifying concrete opportunities for interdisciplinary research, with common goals and methodologies, and explicitly indicating the path for transfer of knowledge between sectors.