Finally, the proprietary standards usually have extensive ‘depth
and breadth’, but cover mainly the requirements (documents and
elements) ofthe strong creator firm. Also,they are characterized by
much lower levels of applicability, as such a standard can be used
for establishing IS interoperability only with the creator firm and a
small number of firms that adopt it. Usually the adoption of such a
standard by a firm is not an initiative of its management, and it is
imposed by a strong customer, supplier or business partner. For
these reasons the adoption of proprietary standards leads to lower
increase of the impact of firm’s ICT infrastructure on business
performance in comparison with the industrial ones.