In this chapter we discuss standards as forms of partial organization. Standards are defined as decided rules for common and voluntary use. Taking the example of CSR and corporate governance standards, we show that the degree of partiality of standards can vary widely – ranging from a single element of organization, i.e. decided rules, to all five elements of organization, i.e. decided rules, hierarchies, membership, monitoring and sanctioning. We demonstrate that in some cases partiality is the result of restrictions in the design of standards, while in other cases it is the result of an explicit choice. We also demonstrate that the degree of partiality of standards can change over time, as there are often pressures for standards to adopt additional organizational elements. Furthermore, we discuss the dispersed nature of many standards, showing how different actors often provide different organizational elements of standards without any central coordination. We close with an outline of an agenda for future research.

In recent years, researchers have observed the increasing emergence of new forms of organization, in which membership is described as becoming fluid or unclear. Against this backdrop, scholars have proposed to drop membership as a defining criterion for formal organizations and instead to apply the broader concept of ‘contributorship’, which states that there are not only members of an organization, but also contributors who belong partially to the organization, as long as they participate in the organizational processes. I add to this development and combine the concept of contributorship with the decision-based perspective on organizations, which sees decisions as the constitutive elements of organization. Thus, contributorship can be understood as a matter of decision: through their decisions, organizations manage the possibilities for individuals to contribute. I build on two qualitative case studies demonstrating that instead of defining specific members, organizations can decide on spatial, temporal, attributional, resource-related, and/or quantitative-limitational premises for distributing possibilities of contributions.