Interorganizational Information Sharing Research Articles

Interorganizational Information Sharing: Collaboration during Cybersecurity Threats

Information sharing is examined to determine if the willingness to share information relates to the willingness to collaborate in interorganizational actions used to address cybersecurity threats. This study employs ANOVA by placing 85 organizational representatives that participated in a cyber terrorism training exercise into two categories: higher versus lower willingness to share information. The dependent measures in this study are proxies for collaboration measured by willingness to seek assistance from other organizations and willingness to offer assistance to other organizations. There is a significant statistical difference between the two categorizations of organizational representatives. The category that had a lower tendency to share information also had a lower willingness to collaborate with other organizations. This research shows that sharing information is critical when collaborative interorganizational action is required to face cybersecurity threats. Managers of organizations that respond to cybersecurity threats should promote the tendency to share information with other organizations that have the resources to aid in addressing the threat. Organizations involved in cybersecurity threats that are willing to share information are more willing to participate in integrative interorganizational efforts. This study includes a sample of actual decision makers of organizations that would handle cybersecurity attacks in their community. In this study, we demonstrate the role of information sharing for enhancing integrative, collaborative action in a time where promoting this type of action is imperative to cybersecurity initiatives.

Improving Interorganizational Information Sharing for Vendor Managed Inventory: Toward a Decentralized Information Hub Using Blockchain Technology

Supply chain literature has long recognized the benefits of information sharing. Researchers and practitioners see high potential for improving processes, enabling new replenishment policies, and enhancing supply chain integration. Even though information technology represents a vital role as a driver and a success factor for implementing information sharing, established technologies still do not reflect the highly decentralized and fragmented characteristics of complex and often global supply chains. Early research shows that blockchain might be an enabler for the supply chain management. However, little is known about how blockchain might improve information sharing for complex, multitier supply chains. Therefore, this article aims at analyzing how and to what extent blockchain can facilitate information sharing for vendor managed inventory by designing a software prototype based on Hyperledger Fabric using the design science research approach. This research took place in close cooperation with a leading German healthcare technology manufacturer, which allowed us to base our study both on literature and practical insights. With our results, we contribute to the supply chain knowledge base by introducing the decentralized information hub model, describing how companies utilize decentralized technologies, such as blockchain, to facilitate information sharing.

Exploitation and Exploration in the Presence of Interorganizational Information Sharing

When involved in an uncertain and competitive business environment, firms are faced with two contradictory pressures: differentiate from competitors for competitive advantages vs. conform to industrial norms to gain legitimacy. Building on and extending James G. March’s work on exploitation/exploration and organizational learning, this study enriches our understandings of this differentiation-conformance dilemma. Using a mixed-method design, we investigate how interorganizational information sharing influences firms’ performance using both a computational model and an illustrative case study. The computational model helps unfold the underlying dynamic and adaptive learning mechanism. Our results suggest that information sharing within an industry can significantly improve the performance of the whole industry. This positive effect of information sharing is especially salient in the presence of learning cost, because it helps a firm overcome the success trap. Our case study on the Chinese photovoltaic industry supports and lends external validity to these findings. When engaged in a highly uncertain new area, firms need to pay attention to the industrial norms by imitating and updating timely to the leading experiences and legitimate technological trajectories. Lead firms and industrial associations play a key role in spreading information and shaping legitimate technologies, which greatly improves the performance of the whole industry.

Environmental uncertainty and interorganizational information sharing

The relationship between environmental uncertainty (EU) and interorganizational information sharing (IIS) remains equivocal. Existing research has investigated the phenomenon from only one partner’s perspective, based on either resource dependence theory (RDT) or transaction cost economics (TCE). This study assesses the relative strengths of RDT and TCE simultaneously by accommodating both partners’ perspectives in the same dyad. Our results show that TCE has greater explanatory power for the manufacturer position, but not for the supplier. Supplier EU does not influence supplier information sharing. RDT arguments are not fully supported for the whole paths. Interestingly, supplier EU influences joint dependence negatively.

Barriers to Interorganizational Information Sharing in e-Government: A Stakeholder Analysis

Government agencies often face trade-offs in developing initiatives that address a public good given competing concerns of various constituent groups. Efforts to construct data warehouses that enable data mining of citizens’ personal information obtained from other organizations (including sister agencies) create a complex challenge, since privacy concerns may vary across constituent groups whose priorities diverge from agencies’ e-government goals. In addition to privacy concerns, participating government agencies’ priorities related to the use of the information may also be in conflict. This article reports on a case study of the Integrated Non-Filer Compliance System used by the California Franchise Tax Board for which data are collected from federal, state, and municipal agencies and other organizations in a data mining application that aims to identify residents who under-report income or fail to file tax returns. This system pitted the public good (ensuring owed taxes are paid) against citizen concerns about privacy. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the authors propose a typology of four stakeholder groups (data controllers, data subjects, data providers, and secondary stakeholders) to address privacy concerns and argue that by ensuring procedural fairness for the data subjects, agencies can reduce some barriers that impede the successful adoption of e-government applications and policies. The article concludes that data controllers can reduce adoption and implementation barriers when e-government data mining applications rely on data shared across organizational boundaries: identify legitimate stakeholders and their concerns prior to implementation; enact procedures to ensure procedural fairness when data are captured, shared, and used; explain to each constituency how the data mining application helps to ensure distributive fairness; and continue to gauge stakeholders’ responses and ongoing concerns as long as the application is in use.

What Drives Firms to Engage in Interorganizational Information Sharing in Supply Chain Management?

With growing use of interorganizational systems, the scope of interfirm collaboration has increased considerably, particularly in the supply chain context. An important prerequisite of interfirm collaboration is information sharing. Extant research suggests clear advantages of information sharing. The research at hand addresses antecedents of interorganizational information sharing. Based on findings from interorganizational systems adoption and interfirm collaboration research, a structural model is developed and validated by a quantitative survey among Austrian retailers and manufacturers in the fast-moving consumer-goods sector. The proposed model analyzes the effect of internal factors (commitment, information policy, and technical readiness), interorganizational factors (relationship, trust, power, and trading partners’ technical readiness), and economic factors (perceived benefits and costs) on information-sharing behavior. The results show the relevance of internal factors and perceived benefits. The study reveals particularities of information-sharing behavior and can help practitioners to understand what motivates their trading partners to share information.

Inter-organizational information sharing: The role of supply network configuration and partner goal congruence

This paper presents a theoretical framework to investigate the relationships between the design of a supply network (SN) and inter-organizational information sharing (IIS). We distinguish between four different types of inter-organizational information sharing. These concepts are developed using a two-dimensional classification scheme consisting of varying levels of the volume of information shared and the strategic importance of this information in an organizational context. Theoretical arguments and analysis of secondary data are used to develop propositions regarding the association between SN configurations and IIS types, and the role of coordination structure in such associations.

Inter-organization information sharing systems

The authors discuss concepts underlying the growth of Inter-Organizational Information Sharing System (IS). A classification scheme is presented and the issues of cost commitment, responsibility, a...

Inter-Organization Information Sharing Systems

The authors discuss concepts underlying the growth of Inter-Organizational Information Sharing System (IS). A classification scheme is presented and the issues of cost commitment, responsibility, and complexity of the operating environment are discussed. Organizational impacts associated with IS participation are also examined.

Interorganizational Information Sharing: A Successful Intervention that Failed

Behavioral science intervention at the interfaces of organizations is likely to become increasingly important in the near future. This paper examines an interorganizational intervention for evidence of intervention effects and for clues to the complexities of the thirdparty role. Although the data supported the hypothesis that the intervention would increase the amount and accuracy of the information shared by participant organizations, the expected increases in organizational consensus and decreases in interorganizational problems of coordination failed to materialize. Some implications of these findings are discussed, and some hypotheses about the role of third parties in interorganizational interventions are generated.