The failure of SPRINTEL, an interorganizational information system in Prato (Italy), raises a number of interesting questions with regard to the technical-economic and socio-political perspectives that currently dominate the information systems/information technology literature. These questions underscore the importance of developing additional theoretical perspectives in order to better understand the role of information systems in organizations. This article reflects upon these questions and their theoretical foundations in the context of a case study. The case study describes the implementation, usage, and outcome of an interorganizational information system. An analysis is made of the extent to which the technical-economic and socio-political perspectives are sufficient to explain the failure of this system. The outcome of the analysis shows that these two perspectives are insufficient to provide an explanation. Based on the literature from a variety of sources, a third, complementary, perspective is developed. Like the socio-political perspective (Kling 1980), this perspective is also an interactionist perspective. However, instead of focusing on politics and conflict as the primary interaction mode, it focuses on collaboration and cooperation as the key to understanding interaction processes. This perspective introduces a third rationality of information systems in which trust, social capital, and collaborative relationships become the key concepts for interpretation.
Current interorganizational systems literature focuses on describing the role of information technology in enabling the transition from inter-firm competition to cooperation. This article points out that the promise of IT enabled cooperation, if not nurtured, can degenerate into conflict. The objective of this article is to identify possible risks of conflict in the IOS arena and to suggest strategies for minimizing the likelihood of such conflict. It does so by developing a typology for characterizing IOS along the dimension of interorganization interdependency interfirm relationships. This typology classifies interorganizational systems into three types: pooled information resource IOS, value/supply chain IOS and networked IOS. By examining the characteristics of these three types of IOSs the article identifies the economic, technical and socio-political arguments for potential conflict in these systems. The identification of the risks, in turn, leads to a discussion of possible strategies for containing these risks. The article finally suggests that if the intended benefits of the collaboration are to be realized and sustained, corporate "statesmen" need to nurture the cooperation by anticipating these risks and managing them proactively.