As part of my Ph.D., I developed a theory of benchmarking. I have a paper that gives a good short description. In a nutshell, a benchmark is an indicator of the level of maturity of the paradigm in a scientific community. (Yes, I do mean a Kuhnian scientific paradigm.) Moreover, creating a benchmark (or any other kind of standard) can increase the maturity of the community.
Ongoing work in this area involves study past and present benchmarking efforts, as well as developing new benchmarks in areas such as requirements engineering, testing, and static analysis.