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

行业协调单个组织行动的一种方式是通过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，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（例如，XML）正在迅速取代几十年前的稳定格式（例如，EDI），以不可预见的方式改变标准过程。本提案实证检验了三个不同行业（汽车、零售和抵押融资）的行业范围内垂直信息系统标准的发展、采用、实施和传播。由于标准的传播是独立的组织级行动和集体的行业级行动之间复杂的相互作用，这三个案例研究是基于对来自每个行业的60家公司样本的数据收集，这使得可以比较标准的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，研究集体行动动态对特定IT设计特性的影响。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的潜力。这些好处可以降低消费者的价格。此外，开放Internet标准的广泛使用为那些不能享受早期EDI方法的全部好处的小型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.