Strukturen und Entwicklungspfade von IOIS - Ein internationaler Vergleich in ausgewählten Branchensegmenten
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
The objective of this research project was to contribute to understanding and explaining structure and evolution of inter-organisational information systems (IOIS). The extant information systems literature has studied IOIS mostly at the level of companies or bilateral networks and at short timescales such as a project. In contrast, we intended to study IOIS at larger units of analysis such as an industry, across multiple countries and on longer timescales. We expected that such an approach would not only yield explanations for the variety of IOIS but also contribute to better design and management principles regarding IOIS development, implementation, and operation. At the same time it was acknowledged that this way of studying IOIS would require significant conceptual and empirical efforts. In consequence we have adapted our research design and made significant theoretical and methodo-logical contributions that provide a new basis for the explanation of structure and evolution of inter-organisational information systems. Specifically, we have abandoned our initial, factor-oriented approach in favour of a process approach. Our initial theoretical framework based on an eclectic approach regarding possibly relevant theories could not handle the complexity resulting from the significant broadening of our unit of analysis. In addition, we discovered that most extant systems had a history of more than 20 years which provided rich material and insights into their historical development. Both discoveries motivated us to develop an entirely new theoretical model for describing and explaining IOIS evolution and structure. This decision had also ramifications for our research design. We gave up the initially planned two-phase structure of framework development and testing in favour of iterating between theory development and practical application of our new theoretical and methodological tools. The result of the adapted research design is nonetheless rewarding. We have created and validated a new, social-science based model of inter-organisational information systems and studied their long-term development in five different countries. Moreover, we discovered that this model could be fruit-fully combined with a new organisational theory that provides a theoretical mechanism for explaining evolution of information systems and organisational structures. In the course of applying this theory, we have also elaborated the theory in terms of application to inter-organisational phenomena and description of their internal structure. In addition, we have developed a new method for data analysis as we discovered that traditional data analysis methods become problematic when applied to larger organisational phenomena. We have then evaluated this new data analysis method in view of two different philosophical positions currently employed in the information systems literature. Moreover, as a result of our initial eclectic approach, we have also evaluated a number of economic and organisation theories in view of our data and contributed to their application and further development.
