Design Principles for Inter-Organizational Systems Development – Case Hansel

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we report new findings of an on-going action design research (ADR) study in a public organization, Hansel Ltd, the central procurement unit of the Finnish government. A procurement organization acts as a middleman in public sector procurement. In order to coordinate large-scale procurement supported by a third party, inter-organizational systems (IOS) are needed. However, it is challenging to develop these, as the stakeholders are scattered and not necessarily interested in supporting the development of systems. Our goal is to identify and formulate design principles for efficient and effective inter-organizational systems development in the procurement context. With the particular focus on power relations between the involved organizations as well as their separate interests in the IOS being built, we develop design principles for such systems. In addition to being useful for our case company, we illustrate how these design principles can be applied to a class of similar problems.Keywordsinformation sharingpublic procurementpower relationsinterest in IOSaction design research