Information technology (IT) programs are collections of projects structured to meet goals established by top management regarding the use of technology. Prior research has established the importance of commitment to the organizational goals set by top management and a shared understanding of the goals among the project teams. However, conflicts occur among project teams due to pursuit of their own goals, their unique approaches to completion of required tasks, and their individual need for limited resources. These conflicts need to be resolved in a fashion that leads to the pursuit of program goals, not the independent goals lodged in individual projects. We develop a model of an IT program environment to study the effects of goal interdependence among projects and shared understanding of organizational goals on promoting integrative conflict management (ICM). ICM techniques yield agreement on decisions in the face of conflicting ideas. In turn, ICM promotes arrival at an agreement about implementation means and commitment to the IT program goals, which are better achieved as a result. The model presents a new perspective for research on conflict that considers the specific resolution process to be a key component in the attainment of goals. Practitioners should instill integrative conflict resolution techniques into program and project processes as a fundamental means of achieving goals critical to the organization.
Information Systems research has studied how buyers and suppliers can benefit from improved information visibility in supply chains characterized by uncertainty. However, the relation-specific information processing solutions that provide visibility can only be exploited if the two firms engage in sufficient coordination efforts. This work takes a nuanced look at how dyadic benefits are derived in the supply chain. Drawing on the information processing view, resource-based view, and transaction cost theory, this study explicates how buyer performance can result from buyer's use of relation-specific information processing solutions and supplier's relational responses. Two interfirm information processing solutions are proposed and examined: the use of IT-based systems for planning and control, and the use of relational (normative) contracts. Based on a sample of 144 manufacturing firms, eight of the nine proposed research hypotheses receive empirical support using PLS analysis. The findings suggest that as buyers and suppliers utilize the IT and relational solutions, they induce relation-specific responses represented as supplier's business process investments and modification flexibility, which in turn lead to positive buyer outcomes. The results help us gain a more granular understanding on how relation-specific interfirm information processing solutions can lead to performance through enhanced interfirm governance capabilities.
Knowledge transferred in the open market via a price mechanism enjoys the benefits of avoiding internal competition, learning from external competitors, and accumulating diversified knowledge. In the market, users can access a repository of knowledge for a single price (repository pricing) or knowledge items in the repository can be sold individually (knowledge pricing). However, users have been found to prefer repository pricing but not the knowledge in the repository. This irrationality can cause market failure because users derive a suboptimal level of utility from the knowledge repository, and vendors have contradictory pricing and knowledge strategies. We empirically examine a joint explanation from two competing theoretical perspectives that accounts for this inconsistency nicely: The mental accounting perspective endorses repository pricing because it entices users with the benefits of the whole repository, whereas the transaction decoupling perspective finds expression in individually priced knowledge because it prevents the discrete benefit of knowledge from becoming obscure. By integrating the two theoretical perspectives and considering price, knowledge, and user characteristics simultaneously, the results offer important implications for the market transfer of knowledge. Repository pricing attracts users and is essential to initiate the transfer process, whereas knowledge pricing generates knowledge preference and is thus an effective approach for learning.
There are many benefits of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, but their implementation is both complicated and difficult because the product spans functional silos and involves many internal and external entities. An ERP system is the outcome of social processes, and different ERP systems can embody distinct social arrangements when developed in different cultural contexts. Such social arrangements are difficult to change due the closure effect of technology stabilization. This leads to various misfit problems, both during and after ERP implementation, causing adverse effects on delivered ERP quality. With a survey of 85 ERP implementation cases in Taiwan, this study derives and empirically tests the main as well as the interaction effects of the country of origin of the ERP package, consultant quality, top management support, and user support of the ERP system quality as perceived by the client after implementation. The results demonstrate the important role of the country of origin of the ERP package and consultant quality in configuring a high-quality ERP system and alleviating the negative effect of misfit problems.
Organizing and maintaining a competent and flexible supply chain is a major challenge to manufacturers in today's increasingly competitive and uncertain environments. Virtual integration represents the substitution of ownership with partnership by integrating a set of suppliers through information technology (IT) for tighter supply-chain collaboration. From the systems and control perspectives, this study develops a theory of virtual integration with an empirical model to examine the role that virtual integration plays in facilitating manufacturers to achieve greater manufacturing flexibility and comparative cost advantage. Based on a survey of Taiwanese manufacturing firms, our results show that environmental uncertainty tends to motivate manufacturers to increase their manufacturing flexibility, with both virtual integration and supplier responsiveness playing a vital enabling role. The results demonstrate the importance of supplier responsiveness for manufacturers to gain manufacturing flexibility and comparative cost advantage in supply-chain operations. Environmental uncertainty, thus, might first appear as a threat to a manufacturer, but with the help of IT and more responsive suppliers, such a threat could be transformed into a competitive edge, as reflected in the manufacturer's higher levels of manufacturing flexibility and comparative cost advantage.
The control of an information systems (IS) department is studied when its manager has private information about the department's cost and has objectives which may differ from those of the organization. The computing resource is represented by a queueing model, and it is assumed there is no access to external information processing markets by either users or the IS department. A mechanism design approach is used. We derive conditions that the optimal mechanism must satisfy; the first-order conditions of the full-information problem generalize in a clear way with the virtual marginal cost replacing the full information marginal capacity cost. The consequences of the information asymmetry include reduced capacity, arrival rate and utilization rate, and higher prices and mean waiting time compared to the full-information solution. Thus the organization suffers losses due not only to the IS manager's informational rent, but also to the opportunity cost of jobs not served. The revelation principle guarantees that the resulting mechanism is at least as good as a profit center, as well as outperforming any other centralized method of control. The mechanism design approach is also shown to be robust with respect to uncertainty on the part of the central management about the degree of incentive conflict with the IS manager. An example and numerical results give some feeling for the magnitudes of the effects, and managerial implications are also discussed. The paper also serves to illustrate the application of mechanism design to an IS problem; we briefly discuss other promising IS applications of this important methodology.