The purpose of this article is to provide insight in standardization education by presenting the results of an international workshop organized by the International Committee for Education about Standardization (ICES) together with findings from literature. The main topics are: needs for standardization education, audiences and learning objectives, contents of an academic curriculum, and available materials for academic teaching. We found an enormous gap between manifest and latent needs for standardization education. The lesson to be learnt from some Asian countries is that this gap can be bridged. First, by a strong national policy which may be part of a regional policy. Secondly, by cooperation between government, industry, national standards body, academia and other educational institutions. The increasing number of initiatives and activities of the last three years indicates that there is a momentum for education on standardization. Our paper provides a structured approach for using this momentum to further develop and implement standardization education. It challenges researchers in the field to interrelate research and education.

This article addresses the problem of entrenchment in large technical systems. It explores in what manner standardization could be used as a means to inscribe flexibility into infrastructures and focuses in particular on the role of standardized gateway technologies. Two cases are examined: the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for structured information exchange and the intermodal freight container, also known as the ISO container.The cases indicate that flexibility is a transient characteristic of gateway standards. Where standards do not meet the needs of subsystems and changed circumstances, competing gateways emerge. Flexibility, entrenchment and competition are part of a cyclic movement in gateway evolution. Entrenchment, Standards and System Flexibility 1Policy developers in the fields of transportation and information networks face a problem that besets most infrastructures and other large technical systems (LTSs): such systems often seem impervious to change. Indeed, most studies on the matter confirm that change is most difficult. The countless number of interdependent socio-technical components and subsystems define the complexity of LTSs. They comprise technical artefacts as well as, for example, the institutional and regulatory contexts of artefact use and production (Kaijser, 1999). Organisations and companies emerge that develop and sustain the system. Each specialises in certain tasks, develops technical add-ons and complementary products, gains experience with (part of) the system, etc. As the infrastructure develops, the number of and interdependence between actors and artefacts grows. Over time, these interdependencies crystallise, solidify, and make manifest a process of Tineke Egyedi, Ph.D, is a co-guest editor of this issue.You can read more about her in the Foreword.

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