Ethics and Standardization

Abstract

This chapter examines the important relationship between ethics and standardization. This issue has never been among the most prominent issues in the context of standardization, even though it has been extensively discussed in the context of ethics and the economy. Nonetheless, it is important to properly understand the development of standards in the first place and why standards are indeed ethically relevant. The main claim is that ethics and standardization are deeply interwoven concepts and should be seen as conjoined twins. There is no ethics without standards and there is no standardization without ethics, because the market—the exchange of goods among people—is part of the normative realm.