Researching the societal impact of standards
Hi everyone! Our names are Bibi and Janne and we conducted an internship at SFS from March 2022 until May 2022 as part of our thesis projects. We both studied the master Management of Innovation at Rotterdam School of Management. For our thesis we chose to take part in the XXM project which aims to research the impact of standardization on society. In order to research this, several students from Rotterdam School of Management were sent to different standardization bodies to research a specific standard.
At SFS Bibi researched the societal impact of standard ISO 14155 on clinical research of medical devices for human subjects and Janne researched the societal impact of standard EN 16516:2017+A1:2020 on indoor air quality in Finland.
Prior to our course on standardization, we had little knowledge about standards and their impact on society. During the course we learned that standards are everywhere and that they impact our daily lives without even knowing it sometimes. Think for example about food safety, safety of transportation and compatibility of electrical devices.
Through standardization we can help increase quality and safety of products and services, but also help organizations develop their management systems in order to perform better on for example their environmental footprint. This is what makes standardization very interesting as we can help improve the world in areas that we find important.
As soon as organizations realize that they can use standards to their advantage we hope that it will become more and more well-known in the university curriculum as well.
It is a topic that is not very popular at university level even though the impact of standards is very significant. As soon as organizations realize that they can use standards to their advantage we hope that it will become more and more well-known in the university curriculum as well!
We both really enjoyed our experience of doing our internship at SFS. We were welcomed with open arms and received a lot of guidance and help from our very helpful colleagues at the office. The internship at SFS has taught us a lot and we enjoyed the experience of working and living in a different country and culture.
Living in Finland was also an amazing experience. Everyone at SFS encouraged us to see as much as possible so we had the freedom to do many interesting activities. We loved the country and all the adventure it offers. We would highly recommend following an internship at SFS as you will be welcomed with open arms and learn a lot of new things!
Kiitos SFS!
Janne’s and Bibi’s research is a part of the study Measuring Societal Impacts of Standards (Eindhoven University of Technology).