INCORPORATING SOFTWARE AGENTS INTO SUPPLY CHAINS: EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION WITH A PROCUREMENT TASK.

Author List: Nissen, Mark E.; Sengupta, Kishore;
MIS Quarterly, 2006, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 145-166.
Recently, researchers have begun investigating an emerging, technology-enabled innovation that involves the use of intelligent software agents in enterprise supply chains. Software agents combine and integrate capabilities of several information technology classes in a novel manner that enables supply chain management and decision making in modes not supported previously by IT and not reported previously in the information systems literature. Indeed, federations and swarms of software agents today are moving the boundaries of computer-aided decision making more generally. Such moving boundaries highlight promising new opportunities for competitive advantage in business, in addition to novel theoretical insights. But they also call for shifting research thrusts in information systems. The stream of research associated with this article is taking some first steps to address such issues by examining experimentally the capabilities, limitations, and boundaries of agent technology for computer-based decision support and automation in the procurement domain. Procurement represents an area of particular potential for agent-based process innovation, as well as reflecting some of the greatest technological advances in terms of agents emerging from the laboratory. Procurement is imbued with considerable ambiguity in its task environment, ambiguity that presents a fundamental limitation to IT-based automation of decision making and knowledge work. By investigating the comparative performance of human and software agents across varying levels of ambiguity in the procurement domain, the experimentation described in this article helps to elucidate some new boundaries of computer-based decision making quite broadly. We seek in particular to learn from this domain and to help inform computer-based decision making, agent technological design, and IS research more generally.
Keywords: Agents; artificial intelligence; behavioral decision theory; computer-aided decision making; human performance; procurement; supply chain management
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#8 0.153 decision making decisions decision-making makers use quality improve performance managers process better results time managerial task significantly help indicate maker
#71 0.143 distributed agents agent intelligent environments environment smart computational environmental scheduling human rule using does embodied provide trends computer-aided heterogeneous inventory
#52 0.114 supply chain information suppliers supplier partners relationships integration use chains technology interorganizational sharing systems procurement buyer interfirm coordination enterprises flexibility
#222 0.103 research researchers framework future information systems important present agenda identify areas provide understanding contributions using literature studies paper potential review
#138 0.077 use question opportunities particular identify information grammars researchers shown conceptual ontological given facilitate new little constraints dual answer post-adoption theory
#237 0.066 boundary practices capacity new boundaries use practice absorptive organizational technology work field multiple study objects actors actor theory practical spanning
#85 0.064 executive information article systems presents eis executives overview computer-based scanning discusses investigation support empirical robert executive's keys richard managerial chief
#81 0.051 applications application reasoning approach cases support hypertext case-based prototype problems consistency developed benchmarking described efficient practical address activity demonstrate effective