Market Structure and Business Uses of External Telecommunications Networks

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This is the first year funding of a two-year award. The objective of the proposed research is to better understand the effects of using external telecommunications and data networks on firm performance and the nature of relations among trading partners. The research will contribute to the base of knowledge in this area by studying external network usage across firms and across industries, using both qualitative case studies and quantitative survey methodologies. In particular, the research will empirically test a model that proposes that the effects of external network usage on firm performance and buyer-seller relationships are dependent upon the attributes of the networks used, firms, products, and the business context. The research will focus on the openness of the telecommunications networks and on the degree to which they carry computerized data. These contingent influences of network usage will in turn have their effects on performance and buyer-seller structures through a number of mediating factors, which the research will explicitly measure. Mediating factors include the various type of costs firms incur in the process of making transactions with trading partners, the nature of the interpersonal relations that exist between buyers and sellers, and the types of services and products that are exchanged.