The effect of EDI on market channel relationships in retailing

Many of the economic advantages of using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) result from improved relationships between business trading partners. This study develops and tests a model explaining the effects of EDI on three structural variables of inter-organizational relationships: channel intensity, formalization and information quality. The model also includes the effects of these structural variables on cooperation and conflict between trading partners, and on satisfaction and performance in a marketing channel. The model is based on Van de Ven and Ferry's theory of inter-organizational relations and the literature on marketing channels. Responses from 97 retail companies to a mail survey indicated support for the effects of EDI use on channel intensity and formalization but not on channel information quality. Moreover, intensity and formalization were positively related to channel cooperation but not to conflict. Channel performance was positively related to channel cooperation and negatively related to channel conflict. These findings suggest that EDI use improves cooperation between trading partners and leads to greater satisfaction and performance in electronically-mediated business transactions.     

一种跨边界业务过程集成平台

针对分布式异构环境下业务过程集成效率低、动态性差等问题,文章提出了一种跨边界业务过程集成模型,通过将跨边界业务过程集成模型构建为包含业务过程层、自治域内业务过程集成层以及跨边界业务过程集成层三个层次的层次模型,将每层问题简化,并通过层次间的紧密耦合解决复杂的实际问题。基于层次模型构建基于WebService的业务过程集成平台的体系结构,并利用业务过程动态协商技术,动态选择可提供个性化服务的服务提供者,按照合作双方协商结果进行实际业务过程集成,以提高跨边界业务过程集成的效率和动态适应能力。     

Business-to-government application integration framework: A case study of the high technology industry in Taiwan

Business-to-government integration (B2Gi) requires the development of a unique, inter-organizational integration framework to meet the dynamic requirements of various business entities and government organizations. The authors proposed a conceptual framework for the inter-organizational integration service provider (IISP) as a philosophical and strategic guideline for developing inter-organizational integration. A real-world case study was discussed, with the presentation of a cost-benefit model to assess the possibility for adopting such a business model. With the assistance of the guideline for B2Gi, it is anticipated that the proposed integration model will take advantage of the trade-off between the flexibility and controllability issues.     

Building a successful relationship in business process outsourcing: an exploratory study

In the past decade, business process outsourcing (BPO) has emerged as an important economic and business issue. Successful offshoring and outsourcing of business processes to low-cost destinations has made BPO a strategic decision. Inconsistencies at the client and service provider levels globally are requiring clients to build competencies in outsourcing management. Clients are further pushing service providers to build capabilities such as business process management and information technology management competencies. A research survey is carried out with European clients to identify the critical competencies of the service provider and clients for building a successful relationship. The survey indicates that the clients’ focus is on BPO outcome delivery for building successful relationship and not so much on the service provider's competencies.     

Failure factors of small software projects at a global outsourcing marketplace

The presented study aims at a better understanding of when and why small-scale software projects at a global outsourcing marketplace fail. The analysis is based on a data set of 785,325 projects/tasks completed at vWorker.com. A binary logistic regression model relying solely on information known at the time of a project's start-up correctly predicted 74% of the project failures and 67% of the non-failures. The model-predicted failure probability corresponded well with the actual frequencies of failures for most levels of failure risk. The model suggests that the factors connected to the strongest reduction in the risk of failure are related to previous collaboration between the client and the provider and a low failure rate of previous projects completed by the provider. We found the characteristics of the client to be almost as important as those of the provider in explaining project failures and that the risk of project failure increased with an increased client emphasis on low price and with an increased project size. The identified relationships seem to be reasonable stable across the studied project size categories.     

Project Factors Influencing Conflict Intensity and Handling Styles in Collaborative NPD

Conflict and conflict management are critical research issues in client‐supplier collaborative new product development (NPD). A recent study found that conflict intensity and conflict‐handling styles affect collaborative NPD performance. In this paper, we explore the relationships of four NPD project factors, namely product technical complexity, product certainty, task interdependence and the relative power of supplier, to conflict intensity and suppliers’ adoption of integrating and dominating conflict‐handling styles. Research findings based on survey data collected from 193 suppliers provide a clear insight into the conflict intensity and suppliers’ adoption of conflict‐handling styles for NPD projects of various characteristics, which enables better planning for conflict management and helps improve NPD performance.     

Determinants of continuous usage intention in web analytics services

Web analytics services (WAS) have emerged as a rapidly growing business sector in the context of inter-firm internet transactions. WAS are also, from the client firm’s perspective, considered a form of IT outsourcing. In this paper, we identify factors that may affect the continuous usage intention of a firm that has utilized WAS, and validate empirically the relationships between the identified factors. Using the responses from 152 firms, the results of our regression analysis demonstrated that the client firm’s continuous usage intention was influenced by both satisfaction with the WAS provider and dependence on the WAS provider. In the research model developed and described herein, only information quality among the several quality factors was significantly associated with client firm satisfaction. Relative value, switching cost, service usage period, and satisfaction were all significantly associated with dependence. Furthermore, switching experience moderated the effects of system quality and empathy on satisfaction. A discussion of the study’s implications and some future research directions are also provided.     

SLA Design and Service Provisioning for Outsourced Services

In this work, a business-driven approach to designing Service Level Agreements in an e-commerce environment is proposed. In contrast to conventional SLA design approaches, the one proposed better captures the relationship between service provider and service client by considering the negative business impact (business loss) originated from IT infrastructure failures and performance degradation and introduces such knowledge into the SLA itself. A complete example scenario shows the value of the proposed approach. A main conclusion is that the SLA established using the business-driven perspective is superior to the one based on a conventional approach since both service provider and client can simultaneously obtain higher profit.     

Inter-organizational relationships and the flow of information through value chains

I developed a framework that can identify types of inter-organizational relationships. Various kinds of information exchanged between trading partners were grouped into two broad types: transactional and managerial. I then examined the effects of inter-organizational information systems (IOS) and traditional communication media (TCM) on the amount of information exchanged. Stepwise regression analyses showed that the use of value chains was the most significant factor influencing the exchange of both types of information. In examining the impact of the information exchanged to improve production performance, it appeared that different kinds of information influenced different aspects. Depending on the usage level of the media and the types of information exchanged, four categories of inter-organizational relationships and their particular characteristics were defined: traditional links for coordination, strategic alliances, electronic links for coordination, and virtual organizations.     

Alignment in an inter-organisational network: the case of <Emphasis Type="Italic">ARC transistance</Emphasis>

We consider the processes of achieving alignment in coordinated inter-organizational networks through a case study of a system development project in ARC Transistance, a network of European automobile clubs that cooperate to provide pan-European service. The theoretical contribution of the paper is, first, an extended strategic alignment model for inter-organizational networks that distinguishes between integration of IS with business strategy and infrastructure, and what we label ‘accordance’ between the strategies and infrastructures of the network and the member firms. Second, we propose that for a network organization, network and member strategies might be complementary as well as tightly coupled. We similarly argue that IS architectures for networks should strive for being ‘business strategy-neutral’ to more easily accommodate the diversity of members. Finally, we discuss how the process of developing a network information system can be a driver towards network alignment, but how the lack of effective governance structures makes alignment harder to achieve.     

SOA adoption in business networks: do service-oriented architectures really advance inter-organizational integration?

The emergence of the Internet as a global communication infrastructure has dramatically reduced interaction costs within and across organizations, with significant impact on inter-organizational relationships, vertical industry structures, and markets. More recently, service-oriented architectures (SOA) and Web services have introduced the next paradigm shift and foster the idea of dynamic business networks with quick connect and disconnect relationships. However, little research has systematically analyzed how companies leverage SOA to improve their inter-organizational relationships and reshape their business networks. In addition, the mature research stream on inter-organizational information systems (IOS) has not yet sufficiently considered SOA. In order to close this gap, our research seeks to improve the fundamental understanding of how SOA is applied in business networks and how it differs from prior forms of IOS. Using an exploratory research approach, we investigate 33 SOA cases to identify focus areas and patterns of SOA adoption in business networks. Our case analysis builds on a multi-dimensional classification scheme which we derived from prior literature. While our empirical findings do not confirm all promising propositions related to SOA, they underline the specific contribution of SOA compared to prior forms of IOS. We conclude by suggesting five clusters of SOA adoption in the inter-organizational domain, each of those introducing new aspects in the coordination of distributed business networks.     

Vendor Risk Assessment

This article seeks to draw the attention of the executive management of enterprises to the growing importance of vendor risk assessments. Given that modern enterprises outsource non-core processes and operations to business partners and vendors, it is immensely important that a thorough risk assessment is performed of all control aspects and at all times—before the outsourcing and continuing risk assessments. Regulators hold enterprises responsible for data leakages by business partners and vendors. Therefore, enterprises need to ensure that appropriate metrics for measurement of vendor and business partner performance is well laid out in the agreements with the vendors and business partners. Indicative reference framework such as COBIT 5 framework for vendor management, how we manage a cloud service provider and key risk assessment processes have been provided to assist the executive management. Third party audits of businesses and operations of key vendor and business partners need to be conducted.     

基于语义的业务流程一致性评价

随着Internet技术的不断发展,电子商务中的B2B应用也逐渐成为企业之间进行业务活动的主要依托技术,企业定义了自己的业务流程,双方业务流程的一致性在业务伙伴间的协作中扮演着非常重要的角色。目前,已经有诸如BPEL4WS和ebXML这样的电子商务技术能够使得企业在业务流程级进行协作,但这些技术均是基于XML技术,所提供的功能主要是语法上的,很少涉及他们的业务流程的一致性评价。为此,扩展了ebXML框架以支持业务流程的一致性评价,设计了一个一致性评价代理来执行客户企业的需要,并搜寻ebXML注册中心的潜在伙伴的业务信息,基于良好定义的一致性标准测试他们与客户企业业务流程间的一致性,最后提交一个评价结果给客户企业。通过这样的过程,客户企业能够找到合适的业务伙伴。而且,采用了语义网的方法,使得评价的结果更加准确。     

Dynamic stakeholder interaction analysis: Innovative smart living design cases

In order to become more innovative, companies that operate in the Smart Living domain increasingly initiate and participate in networked business environments that transcend industry boundaries. Inter-organizational collaboration is often characterized by conflicting strategic interests and incoherent operational business processes and procedures. Although many scholars and practitioners use stakeholder analysis to gain insight into the actors’ relationships and interactions, existing literature on stakeholder analysis focuses mainly on high-level strategic analysis, often limited to a conceptual and static understanding of stakeholder interests. In this paper, it is argued that a ‘true’ understanding of stakeholders can be achieved by looking at their interactions and interdependencies at a more detailed level. This study uses a conceptual framework from the service innovation and business model domain, the VIP framework, to extend stakeholder analysis by including an analysis of their dynamic interactions and processes. The qualitative evaluation of the framework’s application in illustrative design cases shows that this extension provides additional insights into stakeholders, and their potential operational conflicts and critical dependencies. By making these conflicts and interdependencies explicit, products and services are potentially easier to implement and commercialize.     

A GRASP × ELS approach for the job-shop with a web service paradigm packaging

The Job-Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) is well known for its complexity as an NP-hard disjunctive scheduling problem. The problem addressed in this paper is JSSPs with an objective of minimizing makespan while satisfying a number of hard constraints. An efficient GRASP × ELS approach is introduced for solving this problem. The efficiency is evaluated using the widely known 40 Laurence’s instances which encompass medium and large scale instances. The computational results prove that the proposed method competes with the best published methods in both quality of results and computational time. Recently, Web services have generated great interest in researchers. Such application architecture is based on the client–server model using existing Internet protocols and open standards. It provides new approaches to optimization methods. The proposed GRASP × ELS is packaged into a Web Service (WS), i.e., it offers for the research community an open access to our optimization approach. Moreover, the proposed web service can be even included in research future works with a very small programming effort.To favor utilization of the web service and to prove the facility in which the service could be used, we provide an example in Java proving that it is possible to obtain in less than 10 min a client application using the different methods exposed by this web service. Such usage extends to classical library inclusion in program with the difference that a method is called in the client side and represents an execution on the server.The Web Service paradigm is a new approach in spreading algorithms and therefore this paper stands at the crossroads of optimization research community and the web service community expectations. The GRASP × ELS provided in the web service, is a state of the art method which competes with previously published ones and which has the advantage of being available for free, in any languages, everywhere contributing in spreading operational research contribution.     

SocioTelematics: Harnessing social interaction-relationships in developing automotive applications

In a cooperative convoy, a vehicle interacts with other vehicles, service providers and infrastructure systems to make the travel safe and convenient. Through these interactions a vehicle can share its domain-specific information–acquired from service providers and infrastructure–with other vehicles in the convoy. Such interactions are subject to defined agreements and constraints between the entities (i.e., vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to service provider, and so on), which we refer as (social) interaction-relationships. Such relationships, however, may need to adapt with the changes of requirements. Also a driver may want to automate certain interactions to reduce distraction during driving. A cooperative convoy telematics system should support collaboration (i.e., allow drivers to share specific travel information) and coordination (i.e., allow drivers to automate interactions), and be able to adapt to cope with the changes of requirements.In this paper, we address these issues and demonstrate how our social interaction-relationships modelling technique can be exploited to develop a telematics system, called SocioTelematics, providing such functionalities. This system allows collaboration and coordination preferences explicitly specified and updated to cope with the changes. In particular, our service oriented implementation enhances adaptability of the system, making it easily deployable and changeable. We have implemented a prototype system based on a client–server architecture where the client application is developed for Android and the server is running on the Amazon cloud. The system’s performance and resource consumption were quantified using real life experiments that show the feasibility of our approach.     

网管系统策略冲突解决的结果中存在的问题及检测与解决方法

当前，多种方法被用来解决网管系统中的策略冲突，不同方法有不同的应用范围，因此，通常需要综合应用多种方法来解决策略之间的冲突．各种方法解决策略冲突解决的过程是相对独立的，其策略冲突解决的结果也是相对独立的．在解决策略冲突的过程中，难以考虑到已经存在的策略冲突解决结果．因此。不同的策略冲突解决方法的结果之间可能存在冲突．分析了网管系统中多策略冲突解决方法的结果中可能存在的冲突，提出了检测及解决这些冲突的方法，并给出了实验结果及结论．     

e-Business process interleaving: Managerial and technological implications*

The emergence of Internet as the hub of e-business has made business process integration another important frontier of information management and technology. As a result, the management of inter-organizational business processes is now a major concern of corporate managers. We envision that the new and complex ways of interactions among business partners in a supply web will need to be managed effectively as the next generation of the Internet makes cross company workflow a reality. Consequently, business managers are confronted with new issues and new decisions in the strategic and operational aspects of process integration. To facilitate the understanding of these issues, we introduce a new paradigm of business computing referred to as E-business Process Interleaving, which emphasizes the complex and dynamic integration of e-business processes across company boundaries. In this paper, we outline various impacts of this new phenomenon on information management and technology and investigate the enabling technologies of e-business process interleaving. We believe that our work can help the development of the next generation of corporate information infrastructure that enables greater degree of e-business process integration.This research was partly supported by CITM grants including the DoD contract (2000–2001), N00244-00-C0108, and by the State of California NGI Program.