Conclusion

managing it in government, business & communities
Chapter 16 - Interorganizational Relationships, Strategic Alliances, and Networks: The Role of Communication Systems and Information Technologies
Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities
by Gerry Gingrich (ed) 
Idea Group Publishing 2003
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In interorganizational relationships (IOR), competition, neutrality, and cooperation are major types of relationships. These relationships are changeable in accordance with the situation. Organization grows up through competition and cooperation, or sometimes through natural selection. Competition and cooperation bring social interaction among elements in IOR, and interorganizational learning through social interactions bears innovation.

Strategic alliance is one cooperative relationship. It loosely connects relationships with organizations. It enables one to form agile and flexible IOR. Strategic alliance of organizations operates in the form of ION.

In this chapter, I considered ION as one of the systems, and tried to understand through Barnard's theory of cooperative system and formal organization.

Though there are various types of strategic alliances and ION, communications play a significant role for them to work effectively. Communication systems create purpose and willingness of members to cooperate, and coordinate interorganizational activities in ION as "organization of organizations." Communication systems consist of a human communication system and an electronic one. Both communication systems should work complementarily together.

Communications in ION are made through boundary personnel, whose cognitive style is usually different from his counterpart's because of the difference of organization culture he belongs to. For this reason, it is not sufficient to communicate only through secondary communication by electronic media, etc. The first thing that boundary personnel have to do is to promote mutual understandings with his counterpart by sharing place and time with him and through primary face-to-face communication, which can convey implicit nuance, tacit information, etc. On the other hand, in electronic communication, hypertext may be a powerful media. The problem is how shall we utilize this media effectively and efficiently.

As IT progresses, utilization of it is also developing. As utilization expands to ION, the way business should be or even the way ION itself should be has to be reexamined. Redesign of business and/or ION should be needed for their effectiveness and/or efficiency.

In order for ION to fit for a dynamically changeable environment, interorganizational information network systems, which support ION, should be also adaptable to such change. For the purpose of such a requirement, "standardization" is a key concept. A standardized open network environment, standardized business process and business protocol, and standardized information processing environment and applications, etc., are necessary.

But the problem is that a system tends to be specialized because network needs to meet specific conditions in order to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of a network as the alliance of ION gets firm. To solve this problem, to what extent standardization should be made is the important theme. Levels of standardization should be decided in accordance with the necessity of rearrangement of ION.

In connection with this matter, information security measures should also be dynamic in order to meet the rearrangement of business process and ION timely and precisely.

In this chapter, I referred to interorganizational relationships, strategic alliance as cooperative relationships, interorganizational networks, and information technologies in interorganizational networks. Among them, on the last subject, I examined a communication system based on Barnard's theory.

However, in an interorganizational network, there is the dimension that interorganizational learning through social interactions among member organizations bears innovation creating new resources, products and services, and markets for sustainable competitive advantage. And in this dimension, study about interorganizational knowledge management systems is indispensable.

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Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities
Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities
ISBN: 1931777403
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 188

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