Interpreting Certification as a Signal of Interoperability: Organisational Implications in a Qualitative Case Study

Abstract

This thesis investigates how reliance on ONVIF certification, a global interoperability standard in the network video industry, influences how a large technology company organises its internal organisational structures, roles, responsibilities and resource allocation. Technical standards such as ONVIF, with adherence validated through certification processes, are widely used to promote interoperability between products from different manufacturers. However, relative to technical and financial aspects which have been heavily researched, the organisational role that certification has, with how it is interpreted and relied upon within firms, still remains underexplored. The aim is to approach the identified research gap on how certification works as an organisational mechanism by looking beyond its technical and commercial roles to how this organisational phenomenon affects how companies coordinate, prioritise and make sense of standardisation in practice.

The study is structured as a qualitative, interpretivist single-case study, combining abductive reasoning with thematic analysis of empirical data. To gain multiple perspectives, eighteen semi-structured interviews were held with five different organisational roles, both within the case company: managerial roles, implementation engineers, quality assurance leads, customer-facing roles, as well as externally: both the current and previous chairmen of the ONVIF organisation itself. This sampling approach of considering multiple roles was implemented to gather differing perspectives of how certification is interpreted and how it influences how work is organised across different functional and organisational positions within the case company.

The findings show that ONVIF certification has multiple roles within the case company: as a pre-requisite for market access, an organisational coordination mechanism, a shared starting point that allows for multiple diverging role-based interpretations, and a strategic business enabler. Certification is considered to be a minimum requirement for market participation, in contrast to the development of proprietary functionality, which is seen as the main method of competitive differentiation. Empirical data suggests that certification is not in practice always able to guarantee seamless interoperability, even for two equally-certified products, as the intentionally limited scope of what is required for conformance creates some variance between what formal testing verifies and what the market assumes the certificate implies. Emergent from the empirical and theoretical analysis, the findings are concentrated into an analytical framework which highlights how the case company addresses the adoption and maintenance of the ONVIF standard, thereby producing contributions to institutional theory and to organisational literature on technical standards by demonstrating that certification functions as a multi-layered organisational mechanism, with implications for how standardising organisations construct their certification frameworks and how companies structure their engagement with external standards.

Popular Abstract

With technology becoming an increasingly integrated part of our society, there is also a growing expectation that technical products from different manufacturers will work together seamlessly. An example of this is surveillance cameras and video management systems (VMS) from different companies. For products to be able to work together, technical standards are used to describe how the products should communicate. One of the most important and widely adopted standards in the network video industry is ONVIF (Open Network Video Interface Forum). Products that successfully implement ONVIF’s requirements are allowed to be certified, which communicates to the market that the products are compliant with the standard and that they can be expected to work together with other certified products.

Previous research has mainly focused on the technical and financial aspects of standards, but how certification influences how companies organise their work, distribute responsibilities and make decisions has been underexplored in relation. This master’s thesis examines how a large technology company in the network video industry is affected organisationally as a result of relying on ONVIF and its certification. The study is conducted as a qualitative and explorative single-case study, with the primary data source being semi-structured interviews with employees at the case company, e.g. managers, implementation engineers, quality assurance and customer-facing roles. Even the current and previous chairman for the ONVIF organisation were interviewed in order to gather wider ecosystem perspectives.

The results show that certification has many aspects and is interpreted in different ways by different roles. ONVIF’s certification does not automatically guarantee that products in practice work together
fully seamlessly. Even with two equally-certified products, problems seemingly still occur with compatibility. This is possible because the standard leaves flexibility for different technical interpretations and implementations. The study therefore identifies a difference between what certification actually verifies and what many customers and employees think it guarantees. The study also shows that engineers often view certification as a minimum and as a technical framework on which to further build upon, whereas sales- and businesspersonnel view it as a guarantee for interoperability and also as a marketing asset. Certification thereby becomes a common reference point used by everyone, but with differing meaning depending on role and responsibility.

An important conclusion is that certification works as an organisational tool, not just as a way to technically validate products. The shared certification goal helps the case company to coordinate work, to prioritise resources and to distribute responsibility between departments. However, risks can arise if too much trust is placed in the expectation that products work together, when that is not always the case.

The study’s contribution is new knowledge about how technical standards affect organisations from a deeper and more detailed perspective. The analysis shows that certification concerns much more than just the technical aspects, but also how people interpret information, collaborate and make decisions together. For companies, this means that standards such as ONVIF should be seen as both technical and organisational tools, where it is necessary to have a well-planned balance between trust in certification and continuous, critical examination of how products work together in practice.

• author: Hearfield, Jeremy
• supervisor: Izabelle Bäckström
• organization: Department of Industrial and Mechanical Sciences; Production Management
• course: MIOM05 20261
• year: 2026
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Standardisation, Interoperability, Certification, Organisational interpretation, Organisational structures, Sensemaking, Institutional theory, Signalling, Case study
• other publication id: 26/5357
• language: English
• id: 9240546
• date added to LUP: 2026-06-17 18:10:16
• date last changed: 2026-06-17 18:10:16