Abstract:

With the continuous advancement of standardization reform and the implementation of the new standardization law， Chinese group standards have shown a vigorous development trend in recent years. But the low quality of standards has become a key problem that plagues the development of group standards. In this paper， from the perspective of group standard development subject， four different complexity situations can be distinguished based on the number of components and dependency of the developed standard， which are simple， slightly complex， more complex and complex situations. Based on the NK model， the process of standard development in modeled as a search， evolution and collaboration process of multiple actors in a technical field to find feasible solutions. The impact of the number of actors involved in standard development， the complexity of the standard itself and the coordination level of the group standard organization on the quality of the standard is studied under these four scenarios by means of simulation.It is assumed that there are M subjects involved in standard development and coordination activities in this process， and the standard development process can be modeled as a collaborative adaptive search process conducted by M subjects around a common technical problem， with the search aiming to seek the optimal technical solution in the technical landscape， thus forming a group standard. They can either improve performance by developing innovations in their own technology， i.e.， improve the performance of their own technical solutions， or switch to technical solutions with better results proposed by other participating subjects in the group organization. For the former strategy， due to limited rationality and technological path dependence， the evolution of firms' own technological landscape position is mainly achieved by means of local search. For the latter strategy， it is considered that at each stage each subject tries to imitate with probability d=(\mathrm{1}-\text{?}{A}_{\mathrm{0}}/A_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{x}})， where A₀ is the magnitude of attractiveness of the selected subject's landscape location， numerically equal to the solution quality P₀， and A_max is the attractiveness of the landscape location of the best performing solution. In fact， group standard organizations can play an important organizational coordination role in this process， and different coordination strategies may produce different standard development processes and results. The coordination coefficient c is used to characterize the coordination ability of group standards organizations， with c taking values between 0 and 1. The model causes c·M participating subjects to turn directly to a candidate technical solution when that solution meets certain performance criteria. The experimental design first analyzes the influence of the number of subjects in different complexity contexts on the quality of the standard， and discusses the optimal number of participating subjects for a given context and the influence of contextual factors on the quality of the standard. Secondly， the changes in the quality of standards brought about by the coordination ability of group standards organizations are examined to explore the best way of coordination.The results of the study show that increasing the number of subjects involved in standard development can improve the phenomenon of technical shortsightedness， and the number of subjects can be adapted to the complexity of the technology to achieve efficient improvement of the standard quality， and the more complex the technology is， the more the number of participating subjects is required to achieve optimal standard quality， and a reasonable number of subjects needs to match the complexity of the technical standard itself. The enhanced complexity of the technical environment will lead to sub-optimal standards， in which the increase in the number of technical elements has a low impact on the quality of standards， while the increase in the degree of dependence of elements will significantly reduce the quality of standards. The coordination ability of group standards organizations has two distinct impacts on the quality of standards. In less complex technical contexts， the intervention of group standards organizations is detrimental to the quality of standards. However， the coordination level of the group standard organization should be kept within a certain range， too high coordination level is not conducive to the formation of optimal standards， and the corresponding coordination intensity should be selected according to the technical characteristics. Based on the results of simulation analysis， three strategies are proposed to improve the quality of group standards， such as improving the participation of market players， increasing the development of standards in key technical fields and optimizing the coordination mechanism of group standards. The research expands the theoretical perspective and research method of group standard research， and provides theoretical support and practical guidance for effectively improving the quality of group standards.

Key words: NK model, group standards, quality improvement, local search