摘要:

This article and the entire special issue address relationships between information systems and changes in the organization of modern enterprise, both within and across firms. The emerging organizational paradigm involves complementary changes in multiple dimensions. The revolution in information systems merits special attention as both cause and effect of the organizational transformation. This can be illustrated by considering two key variables: location of information and location of decision rights in organizations. Depending on the costs of information transmission and processing, either the “MIS solution”; of transferring information or the “organizational redesign solution”; of moving decision rights can be an effective approach toward achieving the necessary collocation of information and decision rights. When information systems change radically, one cannot expect the optimal organizational structure to be unaffected. Considering the interplay among information, incentives, and decision rights in a unified fashion leads to new insights and better organizational planning. The articles in this special issue address different facets of this interaction. Despite significant progress, our understanding of the economic role of information systems in organizations remains in its infancy. Successful design of modern enterprise will require additional narrowing of the historic gap between research in information systems and research in economics.

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540203

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

Recent years have observed a number of interorganization information systems and electronic data interchanges through which multiple organizations share information. This article studies the incentives to share information when two or more companies are involved in a supplier‐buyer relationship. We propose two models through which we pursue the question: What type of information will be shared? In the first model, we study the incentives for a production company to share itsqueueinformation with its customers. The release of queue information has a trade‐off between loss of profits and efficient flow control, but we show that the supplier will share information under certain regularity conditions. The second model studies the incentive for a supplier to sharepriceinformation with its buyer. As the buyer makes its quantity decision based on the price information fed by the supplier, the latter has to choose between keeping the communication channel alive for good news and benefiting from the buyer's uninformed purchase decisions. We show that, in most practical situations, the supplier will not voluntarily share its price information.

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540204

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

In recent years, network organizations have gained much attention as more and more of them have emerged in various industries. The problem of coordination within network organizations is an important one that differs in major ways from coordination within hierarchies or markets. We contend that computer technology has a potential for usefully supporting coordination efforts in networks. As a basis for studying such potential in a systematic way, a formal model of network organizations would be helpful, particularly to the extent that it represents coordination possibilities.

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540205

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

As search costs and other coordination costs decline, theory predicts that firms should optimally increase the number of suppliers with which they do business. Despite recent declines in these costs due to information technology, there is little evidence of an increase in the number of suppliers used. On the contrary, in many industries, firms are working with fewer suppliers. This suggests that other forces must be accounted for in a more complete model of buyer‐supplier relationships.

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540206

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

Recent literature in information systems notes that software development outsourcing is increasingly prevalent, despite the complexity of managing development across organizational boundaries. Information systems researchers have used transaction cost and agency theories to propose incentive schemes to address this problem. Drawing on legal and organizational theories about contractual relations between firms, this article describes and illustrates a set of contractual elements, essentially hierarchical control mechanisms, that can contribute to the governance of external software development. Software outsourcing contracts using such elements should be viewed as hierarchical, rather than market, organizational forms, in that they are sheltered from the disciplining influence of market forces. Following transaction cost theory, the article proposes that the use of hierarchical elements will vary with transaction characteristics. Actual software contracts are content analyzed to lend empirical support to the propositions. Future research directions and content‐analytic research designs appropriate for analyzing software contracts are then elaborated.

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540207

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

We argue that the study of information technology (IT) impacts on organizations has been hindered by the shortage of formal models from which empirically testable implications of such impacts can be derived. This article demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of this approach by constructing and analyzing optimization models of the organizational design problem for a restricted class of hierarchical organizations. The literature suggests that two organizational characteristics likely to be affected by IT are organizational “flexibility”; and the nature of organizational control problems. Thus, first, a particular concept of flexibility is defined and parameterized. Second, organizational design is formalized as an optimization problem having parameters for flexibility and control effects. Third, probable effects of four broad classes of IT on the model's parameters are spelled out and then analyzed via comparative statics and numerical experiments. One general result is that some types of IT impacts could have significant industry‐level effects since large changes in the optimal organizational scale under profit maximization may result. Some specific hypotheses regarding the impacts of monitoring IT are also derived. Fourth, suggestions for the formulation of empirical models are given. The model shows that a careful understanding of the effects of a particular system is vital to predicting its impacts; for example, monitoring systems of different types can have impacts that are the opposite of one another. The model suggests that short, medium, and long‐run effects of a given IT type can differ from one another, so that lagged effects of IT investments should be studied carefully, allowing for the possibility of different directions of change for different lags.

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540208

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor

ISSN:1054-1721    

DOI:10.1080/10919399309540202

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1993

数据来源: Taylor