The purpose of this paper is to review the current approach used by international institute of welding (IIW) to allocation membership fee and provide recommendation for improvement. As such the paper investigated the different approaches used by IIW; namely old and new method; to calculate fees for member countries. This included analysis of new membership fee calculating method that impacted developing countries. Finally, on top of the new model, we added additional concept and evaluated the advantage to less developed countries as well as developed small countries.

Another goal of this thesis is to provide a recommendation about which model could be fair to all members of IIW. Furthermore, we conducted an online interview in relation to the fee that is calculated based on the new model. The objective was to determine how expensive is the membership fee. To further understand the benefits provided by IIW, the interview included questions about benefits of the research and state of the art knowledge member state receive. The purpose was to understand what benefits member state receive from the research and how it is impacting their company.

We found that members are benefiting from the resources of IIW and the knowledge exchange between members also added value to their organizations. As a result, we can conclude IIW will play an important role on shaping member countries knowledge building. Those who are senior members can also help new members by sharing their experience, which can lead to global advancement of the industry. Further, the interview result shows that for both developing and developed small countries, the membership fee is expensive. Expecially for less developing countries they have low GDP and high population, thus the new calculating method didn't reflect their economic status. According to our findings the new model is not benefiting all members. It is recommended that the client must investigate, through personal interviews with all members and interested parties of IIW. This will show transparency between members. Additionally, variables such as steel usage estimation should be included in the fee calculation method. This can also be extended by analyzing how steel production is contributing to a countries GDP as raw or processed material.