| Introduction to the Special Issue | | BIB | iii | |
| Andrew B. Whinston | |||
| Interpretive Analysis of Team Use of Group Technologies | | BIBAK | 1-29 | |
| Gerardine DeSanctis; Marshall Scott Poole; Gary W. Dickson; Brad M. Jackson | |||
| Studies of the impacts of new computing technologies on organizations often
lead to contradictory or equivocal findings. Studies showing negative or null
effects of computing are as commonplace as those showing benefits. Moreover,
outcomes are nonuniform across individuals, groups, or organizational units and
sometimes vary within the same study. To explain the commonality as well as
the variance in the results of new technology introduction, we propose adaptive
structuration theory. The theory focuses on how technology structures are
applied in interpersonal interaction and the specific nature of appropriation
patterns. We illustrate the power of the theory through interpretative
analysis of three teams as they adapt to use of a group decision support system
over a period of eight months. The analyses highlight differences in
technology impacts across the three teams and also explain some common
outcomes. Our analytic approach appears to be useful in the study of
organizational computing impacts in general and group decision support system
effects in particular. Keywords: Computing impacts, Structuration theory, Group decision support,
Interpretive analysis | |||
| The Computing Paradigm Shift | | BIBAK | 31-50 | |
| John S. Quarterman; Smoot Carl-Mitchell | |||
| Over the last five years, there has been a shift from centralized to
distributed computing. Timesharing and batch systems still have uses, but the
large mainframe is no longer the only way to do computing. Networks have
spread computing power, access, and costs beyond centralized computer centers.
Personal computers have made computing accessible to many new users.
Distributed computing attempts to bring the manageability of mainframe
computing together with the accessibility of networked computing and the
transparency of personal computing. Keywords: Distributed computing, Client/server computing, Peer-to-peer computing, Open
networking, Decentralization, Transparency, Interoperability, Portability,
Transmission Control Protocol, Internet Protocol, Internet, Growth, Open
Systems Interconnection, Standards, POSIX, 4.3BSD, UNIX timesharing system | |||
| Modeling the Going-Concern Judgment Using Argumentation Theory | | BIBAK | 51-85 | |
| Ai-Mei Chang; Andrew D., Jr. Bailey; Jane F. Mutchler; Andrew B. Whinston | |||
| A going-concern judgment is an important classification of a client that
auditors are called upon to render. We study the collective group process of
interpretation that auditors are engaged in by examining their individual
interpretation processes and their interactions among themselves and with
clients. The interpretation process leading to the going-concern judgment
involves four phases: (1) recognizing any potential going-concern problems, (2)
understanding the cause of those problems, (3) evaluating client plans to
mitigate those problems, and (4) rendering a going-concern judgment. We
capture the process underlying a going-concern judgment by representing the
content and process of the interactions using an argumentation language. Keywords: Going-concern judgment, Group process of interpretation, Argumentation
theory, Auditing, Computer-supported collaborative work | |||
| Computer Support of Organization Design and Learning | | BIBAK | 87-120 | |
| Gail L. Rein; Clyde W. Holsapple; Andrew B. Whinston | |||
| Organization design is a pervasive phenomenon that significantly impacts
performance, and yet organization design activity has received little direct
support from computer technology. If organization learning is viewed as the
process whereby knowledge is developed, then organization design both
influences the organizational learning that occurs and is at least a partial
reflection of the organizational learning that has occurred. This article
examines the significance, bases, and means for developing multiuser,
computer-based environments for supporting organization design and learning.
The article introduces a working perspective of organization design and learning highlighted by three key ideas. Organization design and learning (1) is defined in terms of organization work, structure, and process; (2) is an ongoing evolutionary phenomenon; and (3) can and should be an inclusive, distributed, multiparticipant effort. The article identifies the requirements for computer-based technology that supports this working perspective and then presents an overview of a prototype technology that addresses these requirements. The prototype technology consists of two interacting components: Deva, an interactive, multiuser, graphical editor for managing process descriptions; and GPOD, an associated group process for using Deva for organization design. We conclude that such technologies will enable organizations to become self-organizing systems, thereby allowing them to compete more effectively and survive in today's rapidly changing environment. Keywords: Organization design, Organization learning, Group design, Distributed
design, Group process, Coordination technology, Collaboration Technology,
Groupware | |||
| The Design of Coordination Mechanisms and Organizational Computing | | BIBAK | 121-134 | |
| John O. Ledyard | |||
| We provide an introduction to a theory of coordination mechanism design and
show how to apply it to an assignment problem. The purpose is to introduce
those familiar with organizational computing, but unfamiliar with game theory
and economics, to the subject. We also describe briefly how we can test new
mechanisms before taking them into the field. Finally, we raise some
unresolved research questions. Keywords: Assignment problem, Mechanism design, Incentive compatibility, Cooperation,
Experimental economics | |||
| An Agenda for Digital Journals: The Socio-Technical Infrastructure of Knowledge Dissemination | | BIBAK | 135-193 | |
| Brian R. Gaines | |||
| The problems of information overload from the growth of scholarly
literature, and the need to use information technology to manage them, were
identified by major writers and scientists over 50 years ago. Yet, the main
form of scholarly communication, the journal, is still circulated in paper form
as it has been for over 300 years. The economic arguments for using computer
and communication technology to overcome these problems through a new form of
scientific communication, the electronic or digital journal, were vigorously
presented in the 1970s. Experimental trials of digital journals with the
technologies of the 1970s and 1980s have not been successful. In the 1990s,
the continuing value of current journal systems is again being questioned in
terms of soaring library costs, the burden of the current refereeing system,
and the diminishing returns of journal publication brought about by information
overload. This article presents a fundamental examination of the prerequisites
for the introduction of digital journals, at one level in terms of the role of
journals in the social and economic processes of human knowledge production,
and at another in terms of the state of the art in the relevant technologies.
Models of the processes underlying the growth of knowledge in the literature on
the philosophy, history, and psychology of science are first used to analyze
the structure and role of the social infrastructure of journals, including the
editorial and refereeing systems and the role of commercial publishers and
libraries. The motivation for digital journals and past experience is
surveyed, then the learning curves, and current costs and performances of the
enabling hardware, software, communications, and interface technologies.
Examples of the current impact of computer and communications technology on
scholarly discourse are given to enable probable changes to be predicted in the
structure of journals when they are transferred to digital form. Finally, the
social and technological analyses are used to outline some architectures for a
first generation of digital journals emulating the current medium, and for the
evolution of later generations diverging in characteristics to take advantage
of the new medium. Keywords: Digital publication, Electronic journals, Document technology, Publishing,
Sociology of scholarship | |||
| Supporting Collaboration in Digital Journal Production | | BIBAK | 195-213 | |
| Brian R. Gaines; Nicholas Malcolm | |||
| As digital journals come into use there arise new possibilities for the
computer support of the group processes that are involved in developing,
editing, reviewing, revising, annotating, and generally using a publication.
There are now a number of products and research tools designed to support
group-writing teams that can be extended to support a wider range of
interacting roles and activities. Most, however, require use of nonmainstream
word-processing systems, and usually assume that full information is
continuously available through a network to mediate and avoid conflicts. In
the context of digital journals, it is more realistic to suppose that they will
be distributed through both on-line and off-line media, and that a requirement
for continuous network access would severely limit their use. This article
reports research on group-writing tools that deviate as little as possible from
conventional word processors and assume only intermittent network connection
for document exchange and conflict resolution. The system developed can be
used by some people as a conventional word processor, by others as a versioning
and text and sound annotation system, and by others as a full hypertext system,
all while working with the same corpus of documents. It offers full
typographic and page-layout facilities and imports typographic text from, and
exports to, the mainstream commercial word processors so that users are not
locked into a nonstandard technology. It is presented here as an example of
the increased functionality that may be made available through a digital
journal, supporting many of the current roles and activities involved in
journal creation and use while deviating minimally from current journal and
word-processing practice. Keywords: Group writing, Collaboration, Groupware, Digital publication, Electronic
journals, Document technology, Publishing | |||
| Cooperation Support Through the Use of Group Decision Systems | | BIBAK | 215-243 | |
| Piero Migliarese; Emilio Paolucci | |||
| This article considers the development of the group decision support system
(GDSS) field both from organizational and technological perspectives. The
growing importance of teamwork, lateral coordination, and activities
integration inside modern business organizations is emphasized. Technological
and knowledge specialization, quick transformation of business environments,
reduction of response time, and so on, are some of the reasons that can explain
the renewed relevance of teamwork. Also, the development of information
technology (IT) is analyzed in relation to the role it is assuming in
supporting group activities. Research in the GDSS field is then introduced. A
proposal concerning the identification of three different phases in GDSS
studies is developed, ranging from decision rooms to distributed systems. Each
phase shows distinctive research topics and application fields, together with
different organizational goals. Results of these developments are the growth
of potential application areas of GDSS tools. These theoretical
considerations, together with empirical experiences coming from the study of a
real manufacturing environment (an IBM plant where group cooperation plays a
fundamental role for production efficiency), constitute the basis for a
research GDSS prototype (GROUPS). Prototype features are designed to support
executives in facing production-planning problems through an improvement in
communications and in knowledge representation. Keywords: Group decision support systems (GDSS), Organizational analysis, Lateral
coordination, Reactive scheduling, Knowledge-based reasoning | |||
| Information Systems and the Organization of Modern Enterprise | | BIBAK | 245-255 | |
| Erik Brynjolfsson; Haim Mendelson | |||
| This article and the entire special issue address relationships between
information systems and changes in the organization of modern enterprise, both
within and across firms. The emerging organizational paradigm involves
complementary changes in multiple dimensions. The revolution in information
systems merits special attention as both cause and effect of the organizational
transformation. This can be illustrated by considering two key variables:
location of information and location of decision rights in organizations.
Depending on the costs of information transmission and processing, either the
"MIS solution" of transferring information or the "organizational redesign
solution" of moving decision rights can be an effective approach toward
achieving the necessary collocation of information and decision rights. When
information systems change radically, one cannot expect the optimal
organizational structure to be unaffected. Considering the interplay among
information, incentives, and decision rights in a unified fashion leads to new
insights and better organizational planning. The articles in this special
issue address different facets of this interaction. Despite significant
progress, our understanding of the economic role of information systems in
organizations remains in its infancy. Successful design of modern enterprise
will require additional narrowing of the historic gap between research in
information systems and research in economics. Keywords: Organizational design, Information systems, Economics | |||
| Analysis of Interorganizational Information Sharing | | BIBAK | 257-277 | |
| Seungjin Whang | |||
| Recent years have observed a number of interorganization information systems
and electronic data interchanges through which multiple organizations share
information. This article studies the incentives to share information when two
or more companies are involved in a supplier-buyer relationship. We propose
two models through which we pursue the question: What type of information will
be shared? In the first model, we study the incentives for a production
company to share its queue information with its customers. The release of
queue information has a trade-off between loss of profits and efficient flow
control, but we show that the supplier will share information under certain
regularity conditions. The second model studies the incentive for a supplier
to share price information with its buyer. As the buyer makes its quantity
decision based on the price information fed by the supplier, the latter has to
choose between keeping the communication channel alive for good news and
benefiting from the buyer's uninformed purchase decisions. We show that, in
most practical situations, the supplier will not voluntarily share its price
information. Keywords: Interorganizational information system, Incentives, Supplier-buyer
relationship | |||
| Modeling Network Organizations: A Basis for Exploring Computer Support Coordination Possibilities | | BIBAK | 279-300 | |
| Chee Ching; Clyde W. Holsapple; Andrew B. Whinston | |||
| In recent years, network organizations have gained much attention as more
and more of them have emerged in various industries. The problem of
coordination within network organizations is an important one that differs in
major ways from coordination within hierarchies or markets. We contend that
computer technology has a potential for usefully supporting coordination
efforts in networks. As a basis for studying such potential in a systematic
way, a formal model of network organizations would be helpful, particularly to
the extent that it represents coordination possibilities.
From a long-term perspective, the success of a network organization depends on more than efficient transaction processing. It also depends on factors such as participant reliability, motivation, mutual trust, cooperation, creativity, and prudent evolution. All of these are related to the issue of a participant's value (past, current, ongoing, changing) to the network. We introduce a model that formalizes some key aspects of network organizations. At the heart of our formulation is a construct called "reputation," which encapsulates the many attributes that can characterize participants' past behaviors in a network. This model characterizes essential informational aspects of a network organization in a quantifiable form that lays a foundation for analyzing, designing, and implementing computer-based systems to facilitate network operation and growth. We use the model to discuss possibilities for computer-based support of network organizations at managerial and strategic levels, as complements to transaction-level Electronic Data Interchange-like systems. Keywords: Networks, Virtual organization, Reputation | |||
| From Vendors to Partners: Information Technology and Incomplete Contracts in Buyer-Supplier Relationships | | BIBAK | 301-328 | |
| J. Yannis Bakos; Erik Brynjolfsson | |||
| As search costs and other coordination costs decline, theory predicts that
firms should optimally increase the number of suppliers with which they do
business. Despite recent declines in these costs due to information
technology, there is little evidence of an increase in the number of suppliers
used. On the contrary, in many industries, firms are working with fewer
suppliers. This suggests that other forces must be accounted for in a more
complete model of buyer-supplier relationships.
This article uses the theory of incomplete contracts to illustrate that incentive considerations can motivate a buyer to limit the number of employed suppliers. To induce suppliers to make investments that cannot be specified and enforced in a satisfactory manner via a contractual mechanism, the buyer must commit not to expropriate the ex post surplus from such investments. Under reasonable bargaining mechanisms, such a commitment will be more credible if the buyer can choose from fewer alternative suppliers. Information technology increases the importance of noncontractible investments by suppliers, such as quality, responsiveness, and innovation; it is shown that when such investments are particularly important, firms will employ fewer suppliers, and this will be true even when search and transaction costs are very low. Keywords: Buyer-supplier relationships, Incomplete contracts, Intangibles, Incentives | |||
| Hierarchical Elements in Software Contracts | | BIBAK | 329-361 | |
| Soon Ang; Cynthia Mathis Beath | |||
| Recent literature in information systems notes that software development
outsourcing is increasingly prevalent, despite the complexity of managing
development across organizational boundaries. Information systems researchers
have used transaction cost and agency theories to propose incentive schemes to
address this problem. Drawing on legal and organizational theories about
contractual relations between firms, this article describes and illustrates a
set of contractual elements, essentially hierarchical control mechanisms, that
can contribute to the governance of external software development. Software
outsourcing contracts using such elements should be viewed as hierarchical,
rather than market, organizational forms, in that they are sheltered from the
disciplining influence of market forces. Following transaction cost theory,
the article proposes that the use of hierarchical elements will vary with
transaction characteristics. Actual software contracts are content analyzed to
lend empirical support to the propositions. Future research directions and
content-analytic research designs appropriate for analyzing software contracts
are then elaborated. Keywords: Software development, Relational contracting, Outsourcing | |||
| Impacts of Information Technology on Organizational Size and Shape: Control and Flexibility Effects | | BIBAK | 363-387 | |
| Terry Barron | |||
| We argue that the study of information technology (IT) impacts on
organizations has been hindered by the shortage of formal models from which
empirically testable implications of such impacts can be derived. This article
demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of this approach by constructing
and analyzing optimization models of the organizational design problem for a
restricted class of hierarchical organizations. The literature suggests that
two organizational characteristics likely to be affected by IT are
organizational "flexibility" and the nature of organizational control problems.
Thus, first, a particular concept of flexibility is defined and parameterized.
Second, organizational design is formalized as an optimization problem having
parameters for flexibility and control effects. Third, probable effects of
four broad classes of IT on the model's parameters are spelled out and then
analyzed via comparative statics and numerical experiments. One general result
is that some types of IT impacts could have significant industry-level effects
since large changes in the optimal organizational scale under profit
maximization may result. Some specific hypotheses regarding the impacts of
monitoring IT are also derived. Fourth, suggestions for the formulation of
empirical models are given. The model shows that a careful understanding of
the effects of a particular system is vital to predicting its impacts; for
example, monitoring systems of different types can have impacts that are the
opposite of one another. The model suggests that short, medium, and long-run
effects of a given IT type can differ from one another, so that lagged effects
of IT investments should be studied carefully, allowing for the possibility of
different directions of change for different lags. Keywords: Organizations, Computing, Organizational design, Effects of computing on
organizational form, Economics of computing | |||
| Virtual Organizations: Computer Conferencing and Organization Design | | BIBAK | 389-416 | |
| Frank A. Dubinskas | |||
| Computer conferencing systems link groups of users who "meet" in the virtual
space of a computer and interact around a common purpose or topic. These
electronically constituted and mediated groups can mirror, cross-cut, or hive
off from existing organizational structures. This article reports a study of
organizational structuring processes that accompany the introduction of a
computer conferencing system in six industrial organizations. The
relationships among technological capabilities and constraints, existing
organization structures, managerial intent, and the unanticipated consequences
of implementation for structural change are discussed. Employing the same
software system in each case, organizational outcomes are radically different.
Earlier analysts have focused on a contingency model of the organization-to-technology relationship. Computer conferencing systems, however, confound the distinction between technical and organizational systems; they exist in an overlapping border domain between their two parent systems. This article explores the character of this overlapping domain and proposes the terms "virtual group" and "virtual organization" to evoke the special status of groups created through computer conferencing. Virtual organizations are semiotic entities in Weick's [1] sense of equivoque, and their essentially ambiguous, interpretable character is important in shaping organizational outcomes. Virtual groups become part of the ongoing process of structuration [2], while also providing a new tool for organizational design. Keywords: Computer conferencing, CSCW, Groupware, Flexible software and organizational
design, Technology and equivocality, Virtual groups | |||
| Computer-Based Data and Organizational Learning: The Importance of Managers' Stories | | BIBAK | 417-442 | |
| David K. Goldstein | |||
| While many organizations are investing large amounts of money to provide
computer-based data to their managers, little is known about how, or even
whether, managers use these data to learn about the business environment. This
issue is explored by examining how grocery product managers use supermarket
scanner data to learn about changes in the marketing environment. Managers'
stories play a central role in the four-step process used by one product
management organization as it learns from analyzing computer-based data.
First, a manager examines the data and looks for unexpected results -- findings
that contradict one or more of her stories about the marketing environment. If
something is found, the manager carries out a relatively unstructured,
multistage process to make sense out of the unexpected result. This process
can be viewed as a dialogue between the result and a set of tools at the
manager's disposal (including analyses of computer-based data). Next, the
manager tells the story to share her insights with peers and superiors,
developing a common understanding. Finally, the manager creates an official
story, which is used to "sell" new marketing approaches to people outside the
product manager organization -- the sales force and supermarket buyers. Keywords: Organizational learning, Decision support, Marketing information, Managerial
learning, Stories, Story telling | |||
| Evolution of Group Performance Over Time: A Repeated Measures Study of GDSS Effects | | BIBAK | 443-469 | |
| Laku Chidambaram; Robert P. Bostrom | |||
| Many studies in the group decision support system (GDSS) literature have
reported on the behavior and performance of ad hoc groups meeting for the
first, and, in fact, the only time. Such one-time studies of groups may not
represent their longer term behavior and performance accurately. Adaptive
Structuration Theory (AST) conceives of technology use as a social practice
that emerges over time. AST suggests that meeting outcomes reflect the extent
to which structures offered by the technology (such as GDSS tool sequences,
meeting agenda, etc.) are faithfully appropriated by the group. Such faithful
appropriation, however, takes time. This article explicitly recognizes the
relevance of this appropriation process and reports on a lab study that
examined the impact of computer support on group performance over time. In
general, results showed that the performance of computer-supported groups
improved over time, whereas the performance of non-computer-supported groups
stayed the same or declined. The number of alternatives generated by
computer-supported groups increased considerably as they became more proficient
in incorporating the technology into group processes. However, the quality of
decisions made by computer-supported groups began to increase slightly, only
during the last session. Both these findings suggest that AST is, in fact, a
viable theory for studying group behavior and performance over time. Results
from this study also point out the need for conducting more longitudinal
studies of group processes in the future. Keywords: Group decision support systems, Decision support, Group performance,
Longitudinal research, Technology appropriation, Adaptive Structuration Theory | |||