Collaborative Research: Interorganizational Information System Integration Through Industry-wide Standardization: Technical Design Choices and Collective Action Dilemmas

行业协调单个组织的行动的一种方式是通过关于过程和规范标准的正式协议。人们对推动这种关键协调的机制知之甚少，因为这种协调对我们的国家经济竞争力至关重要。新的信息架构技术(如XML)正在迅速取代已有数十年历史的稳定格式(如EDI)，以不可预见的方式改变标准流程。本提案对三个不同行业的全行业垂直信息系统标准的开发、采用、实施和传播进行了实证研究：汽车、零售和抵押贷款金融。由于标准传播是独立组织层面的行动和行业层面的集体行动之间的复杂互动，这三个案例研究的基础是从每个行业收集的60家公司的样本数据，这些数据能够比较标准采用和使用的相对成功及其后果。这是一种独特的多层次方法，调查集体行动动态对特定IT设计特征的影响。更广泛的影响：改进的电子组织间协作在降低交易成本和发展更具竞争力的行业方面具有巨大潜力。这样的好处可以为消费者带来更低的价格。此外，更多地使用开放的互联网标准为那些无法享受早期EDI方法的全部好处的较小组织带来了新的机会。这项研究还将为从业人员的教育提供材料，并将促进几个领域的知识状况，包括信息系统和技术、管理、工业工程、经济学、社会学和社会信息学。

One way industries harmonize the actions of individual organizations is via formal agreements on process and specification standards. Little is known about the mechanisms that drive this critical coordination so foundational to our national economic competitiveness. New information architecture technologies (e.g., XML) are rapidly replacing decades-old, stable formats (e.g., EDI), transforming the standards process in unforeseen ways. This proposal empirically examines the development, adoption, implementation, and diffusion of industry-wide vertical information systems standards in three diverse industries: automotive, retailing, and mortgage finance. As standards diffusion is a complex interaction between independent organization-level action and collective industry-level action, the three case studies are grounded by data collection with a sample of 60 companies from each industry, which enables comparisons of relative success of a standard's adoption and use as well as its consequences. This is a unique multi-level approach, investigating the impact of collective action dynamics on specific IT design features. Broader impacts: Improved electronic interorganizational collaboration has enormous potential to reduce transaction costs and develop more competitive industries. Such benefits can lead to lower prices for consumers. Moreover, the greater use of open Internet standards promises new opportunities for smaller organizations that were not able to enjoy the full benefits of earlier EDI approaches. The research will also produce materials for the education of practitioners and will advance the state of knowledge in several fields, including information systems and technology, management, industrial engineering, economics, sociology, and social informatics.