Inter-organizational Business Research Articles

An agent-based service-oriented integration architecture for collaborative intelligent manufacturing

The rapidly changing needs and opportunities of today's global market require unprecedented levels of interoperability to integrate diverse information systems to share knowledge and collaborate among organizations. The combination of Web services and software agents provides a promising computing paradigm for efficient service selection and integration of inter-organizational business processes. This paper proposes an agent-based service-oriented integration architecture to leverage manufacturing scheduling services on a network of virtual enterprises. A unique property of this approach is that the scheduling process of an order is orchestrated on the Internet through the negotiation among agent-based Web services. A software prototype system has been implemented for inter-enterprise manufacturing resource sharing. It demonstrates how the proposed service-oriented integration architecture can be used to establish a collaborative environment that provides dynamic resource scheduling services.

APPLYING ORCHESTRATION AND CHOREOGRAPHY OF WEB SERVICES ON DYNAMIC VIRTUAL MARKETPLACES

The Service-Oriented Architecture promises to be an affordable solution for the integration of heterogeneous systems through the Internet. In the e-Business field, this promise represents a great chance for companies to increase competitiveness and to enable the enactment of new collaborative e-Business processes. In this paper, we present a Virtual Marketplace infrastructure, the VM-Flow, which uses Dynamic Composition of Web Services (Orchestration and Choreography) as a fundamental technique to enable interorganizational business interactions in the context of Dynamic Virtual Enterprises. The VM-Flow platform is workflow-based and also introduces a series of interaction policies to deal with aspects like autonomy and privacy. A platform model is presented together with details on the infrastructure prototype and on an application built over it.

DynaFlow: a dynamic inter-organisational workflow management system

As the global marketplace becomes more and more competitive, business organisations often need to team up and operate as a virtual enterprise to utilise the best of their resources for achieving their common business goals. As the business environment of a virtual enterprise is highly dynamic, it is necessary to develop a workflow management technology that is capable of handling dynamic workflows across enterprise boundaries. This paper describes a Dynamic Workflow Model (DWM) and a dynamic workflow management system (DynaFlow) for modelling and controlling the execution of inter-organisational business processes. DWM enables the specification of dynamic properties associated with a business process model. It extends the underlying model of the WfMC's WPDL by adding connectors, events, triggers and rules as its modelling constructs. It also encapsulates activity definitions and allows web service (or e-service) requests to be included as a part of the activity specification. Using DWM as the underlying model, DynaFlow makes use of an Event-Trigger-Rule (ETR) server to trigger rules during the enactment of a workflow process to enforce business rules and policies and/or to modify the process model at run-time. A constraint-based, dynamic service binding mechanism is used to dynamically bind web service requests to web services that satisfy the requirements of the requests.

Driving Visibility, Velocity and Versatility: The Role of Mobile Technologies in Supply Chain Management

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, researchers and practitioners have recommended a myriad of information and communication technologies to operationalize the notion of a virtual enterprise. Among the business process transformations enabled through these new technologies, companies are using wireline and wireless technologies in redefining their interactions with suppliers, customers, and business partners. It is hoped that this move towards a truly collaborative supply chain environment will help the firm achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. Towards that end, supply chain planners are emphasizing the need for information exchange anytime, anywhere as a compelling driver for organizations to adopt mobile technologies in their intra- and inter-organizational business practices. This paper discusses the applications of mobile technologies in various areas of supply chain management, and the potential benefits along the dimensions of reduced replenishment times, and transactions and billing cycles. Among other applications, we highlight the role of these technologies in improving processes such as inventory management, product identification, mobile procurement, package tracking, and sales force and field service. To substantiate the basis for adopting mobile technologies for supply chain management, different market drivers for mobile applications are exemplified and applied to the three macro level processes of supplier relationship management, internal supply chain management, and customer relationship management. Several types of legacy, third generation (3G) and emerging mobile services and applications are discussed, and a resulting taxonomy of bearer technologies is presented to explicate their use in upstream and downstream supply chain processes.

Critical success factors of inter-organizational information systems—A case study of Cisco and Xiao Tong in China

This paper reports a case study of an inter-organizational information system (IOS) of Cisco and Xiao Tong in China. We interviewed their senior managers, heads of departments and employees who have been directly affected in their work. Other sources of information are company documents and publicly available background information. The study examines the benefits of the IOS for both corporations. The research also reveals seven critical success factors for the IOS, namely intensive stimulation, shared vision, cross-organizational implementation team, high integration with internal information systems, inter-organizational business process re-engineering, advanced legacy information system and infrastructure and shared industry standard.

InDiA: a framework for workflow interoperability support by means of multi-agent systems

Inter-organisational business processes are by no means rare. On the contrary, a business can only thrive if it cooperates with other businesses, like service providers, wholesalers, shipping companies, insurances, banks, etc. However, there is a major barrier here for automating such processes: the IT infrastructure of the trading partners, or more specifically their variety and independence. Owing to these problems, even if both organisations have automated support for their parts of the whole inter-organisational process, the activities responsible for cross-organisational messaging or document passing are often done manually by post or email. This paper concentrates on the problem of providing support for workflow interoperability, which would allow for linking business partners without the necessity of a major redesign of their workflows. A framework for interoperability between heterogeneous workflow systems is presented, which uses a layer of agents to enforce the correct execution of coordination dialogues between the business partners. Further, the framework is discussed and conclusions are given.

InDiA: a framework for workflow interoperability support by means of multi-agent systems

Inter-organisational business processes are by no means rare. On the contrary, a business can only thrive if it cooperates with other businesses, like service providers, wholesalers, shipping companies, insurances, banks, etc. However, there is a major barrier here for automating such processes: the IT infrastructure of the trading partners, or more specifically their variety and independence. Owing to these problems, even if both organisations have automated support for their parts of the whole inter-organisational process, the activities responsible for cross-organisational messaging or document passing are often done manually by post or email. This paper concentrates on the problem of providing support for workflow interoperability, which would allow for linking business partners without the necessity of a major redesign of their workflows. A framework for interoperability between heterogeneous workflow systems is presented, which uses a layer of agents to enforce the correct execution of coordination dialogues between the business partners. Further, the framework is discussed and conclusions are given.

Developing an enterprise simulator to support electronic supply-chain management for B2B electronic business

The application of any e-Solution promises significant returns. In particular, using internet technologies both within enterprises and across the supply (value) chain provides real opportunity, not only for operational improvement but also for innovative strategic positioning. However, significant questions obscure potential investment; how any value will actually be created and, importantly, how this value will be shared across the value chain is not clear. This paper will describe a programme of research that is developing an enterprise simulator that will provide a more fundamental understanding of the impact of e-Solutions across operational supply chains, in terms of both standard operational and financial measures of performance. An efficient supply chain reduces total costs of operations by sharing accurate real-time information and coordinating inter-organizational business processes. This form of electronic link between organizations is known as business-to-business (B2B) e-Business. The financial measures go beyond simple cost calculations to real bottom-line performance by modelling the financial transactions that business processes generate. The paper will show how this enterprise simulator allows for a complete supply chain to be modelled in this way across four key applications: control system design, virtual enterprises, pan-supply-chain performance metrics and supporting e-Supply-chain design methodology.

New economy – new business models – new approaches

Towards the end of the twentieth century a number of changes occurred that suggest that organisational structures and management attitudes and behaviour in the foreseeable future will differ markedly from the traditional model. Not only had business become global in every respect, but in almost all markets end‐user expectations were undergoing significant change which were forcing business to come to terms with demands for increased choice and quality, flexible ordering and servicing systems, on‐line accessibility to suppliers and competitive prices. The response by business has been equally dramatic. Large organisations have reduced their activities down to core processes and capabilities, adopting the view that astute asset management and risk management are more about managing assets than about ownership. Consequently the largest international corporations can be seen divesting their non‐core businesses and adopting holonic structures. The holonic approach has been adopted by entire industries giving rise to renewed interest in the development of mutually supporting clusters of interdependent interorganisational business systems.

THE ECOLOGY OF INTERORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION SHARING

Increasingly, companies use interorganizational information systems to support business process partnerships, such as automatic replenishment systems and other supply chain initiatives, invoicing and payments, and insurance claims processing. Inter-firm networking in turn can increase the visibility of information generated and used by business partners. These business partners may experience intended and unintended impacts from the changes in the partnering relationship, in effect altering the ecology of the organization. Yet IT researchers rarely study an organization’s ecology, focusing instead on impacts upon internal processes. Our goal in this paper is to propose a definition of interorganizational information ecology, to provide IT researchers with a lens through which interorganizational information sharing should be studied. We begin by reviewing principles of ecology from the natural and social sciences and then discuss the emergence of principles of organizational ecology and information ecology within the management literature. We then argue that advances in information technology have been a primary enabler for companies’ focus on interorganizational business processes and that field research on IT-enabled business partnerships must include the impacts upon each partner and the information shared among them. An example from health care demonstrates the usefulness of the concept, and we conclude with suggestions for field-based research on the ecology of interorganizational information sharing.

E-Business process interleaving: Managerial and technological implications*

The emergence of Internet as the hub of e-business has made business process integration another important frontier of information management and technology. As a result, the management of inter-organizational business processes is now a major concern of corporate managers. We envision that the new and complex ways of interactions among business partners in a supply web will need to be managed effectively as the next generation of the Internet makes cross company workflow a reality. Consequently, business managers are confronted with new issues and new decisions in the strategic and operational aspects of process integration. To facilitate the understanding of these issues, we introduce a new paradigm of business computing referred to as E-business Process Interleaving, which emphasizes the complex and dynamic integration of e-business processes across company boundaries. In this paper, we outline various impacts of this new phenomenon on information management and technology and investigate the enabling technologies of e-business process interleaving. We believe that our work can help the development of the next generation of corporate information infrastructure that enables greater degree of e-business process integration.

A flexible, agent-based ICT architecture for virtual enterprises

Virtual enterprises (VEs), in our view, are conglomerates of regular enterprises that collaborate on an ad hoc basis to carry out an inter-organisational business process. The virtual enterprise has a dynamic structure that depends on the particular process that needs to be carried out. Enterprises can join or leave the virtual enterprise at short notice, depending on the capacity and the opportunity. In recent papers, we studied the use of a mobile agent framework to support the co-ordination of the primary process in a virtual enterprise. We argued that the installation of standard software modules, called service bridges or docks, at the participant enterprises provides a suitable infrastructure for the use of mobile agents for this purpose. The deployment of mobile software agents using such modules has been studied in applications such as networked electronic trading and mediation of negotiations. The emphasis in these applications lies on demonstrating the potential of mobile agents for the support of complex decision problems. In this paper, we study the flexibility requirements an agile enterprise such as the VE imposes on its ICT support. We argue that a mobile agent-based ICT architecture will provide the required flexibility. We will discuss a number of change cases to illustrate flexibility. We examine the impact of these change cases on the requirements on the agent–agent and on the agent–system interaction.

Inheritance of Interorganizational Workflows to Enable Business-to-Business E-Commerce

The World-Wide-Web is fast becoming a crucial medium for electronic commerce. Many companies are now involved in on-line retailing of goods and services to consumers through the Web. In some industries, business partnerships are being fostered in order to broaden the scope of their markets. One example is the telecommunications industry, where changes in business structure, spirited by deregulation, have resulted in alliances amongst different communications providers, including new players like the utilities and entertainment providers. In this environment, business processes may involve multiple co-operating entities and, supporting such interorganizational business processes can be achieved through the use of workflow management systems. In this paper, we present an approach for designing interorganizational workflows that supports co-operation of business partners, while preserving the autonomy of the partner organizations.

A hierarchical constraint satisfaction approach to product selection for electronic shopping support

The development of advanced information and telecommunications technologies has established more convenient ways of interorganizational business transactions. Especially, various forms of electronic trading systems are introduced, which replicate, and often improve, functions of physical market places. We propose a product selection mechanism for such an electronic marketplace, which is viewed as a satisfaction problem of hierarchically organized constraints over product attributes. The proposed approach is more expressively powerful and flexible than product selection based on a single product taxonomy hierarchy.

The network approach in analyzing international marketing and purchasing operations: a case study of a European SME’s focal net 1992‐95

In this paper, the basic tenets of the European industrial networks research tradition are introduced. It is argued that the network approach offers a particularly powerful descriptive tool for analyzing contemporary interorganizational business exchange. The network approach is applied in a case study of a Finnish SME sector furniture manufacturer’s focal net. The case study should be understood as an example of how the network approach can generate meaningful analyses and provide practical implications for capability development, marketing and purchasing, and strategy development.

Workflow systems for inter-organizational business processes

Business processes normally require the interaction of persons and systems of different departments or enterprises. A simple selling process for example, requires the collaboration of four partners (buyer, seller, shipping agency, and bank(s)). Moreover, in large, distributed organizations various levels of automization and heterogeneous IT-infrastructure complicate the design and execution of a general business process. The definition and execution of processes spanning over several products and using different forms of communication with the partners is therefore necessary.

Interorganizational Business Process Redesign: Merging Technological and Process Innovation

:Interorganizational business process reengineering is a logical extension of discussions of the potential for interorganizational systems to fundamentally redefine relationships among buyers, sellers, and even competitors within an industry. This paper presents a model of the relationship between technological and process innovations and describes the interdependence of these two forces. This model is used to explain the inconsistency in the literature regarding the benefits of EDI and other interorganizational systems, which are described as providing strategic competitive advantage in some papers and as providing little or no benefits for implementing firms in other articles. The framework describes the importance of merging technological and process innovations in order to transform organizations, processes, and relationships.

Honesty in Interorganizational Negotiations in the United States, Japan, Brazil, and the Republic of China

The relationship between honesty and the outcomes of interorganizational business negotiations is investigated using a laboratory experimentation methodology. One hundred sixty-two business executives from four countries participated in a buyer/ seller negotiation simulation and then evaluated their own performances and made judgments about their opponents’ strategies and characteristics. Honest bargaining strategies affected negotiation outcomes in different ways across the four cultural groups.