Hypothesis Development

It is reasonable to hypothesize a fit between a company's product strategy and its organizational structure. A Unified IPFS might be expected to have a divisional structure, probably based on product rather than functional units, with responsibility and power delegated to those in charge of each division. Although some matrix structures might be necessary to motivate and control cross-selling and joint product development, the overall organizational structure is likely to be highly bureaucratic. An Allied IPFS would seem to require a more dynamic structure to respond to and nurture the inter-organizational fluidity inherent in its strategy. While each of the individual partners in the alliance might be somewhat bureaucratic, the governance of the alliance, as a whole, must have power both within and across organizational boundaries and must be sufficiently democratic to satisfy its respective partners. One might expect an Allied IPFS to exhibit a semi-bureaucratic or adhocratic structure, with distributed decision-making, some degree of democracy, and less control than one would find in a bureaucracy. A Portal IPFS, built solely on the flow of data with little to no control over its customers, would seem to require an infocracy if its internal structure, leadership, and decision making parallels the face it presents to the consumer. Thus, our null hypotheses:

H1:	Companies following a Unified strategy are more bureaucratic and less infocratic than those following other IPFS strategies.
H2:	Companies following a Portal strategy are more infocratic and less bureaucratic than those following other IPFS strategies.

Yet, it is also reasonable to argue for the opposite hypothesis. A Portal IPFS might demand a bureaucratic structure to counterbalance the fluidity of its customer/supplier relationships by tightly controlling procedures and management oversight. A Unified IPFS might need to operate as an infocracy to become nimble enough to compete with a Portal IPFS. Thus, the truth of these hypotheses needs to be verified empirically.

Testing these hypotheses is complicated by three significant problems. First, the concept of IPFS is relatively young, as is the technology to achieve cross-organizational coordination. As a result, few Allied IPFS providers and even fewer Portal providers exist. Whether more will arise as time passes and technology improves remains to be seen. Second, the concept of infocracy has only recently been proposed. To the best of our knowledge, it has never been operationalized, and no instruments exist to measure it. Finally, it is likely to prove difficult even to identify a company's IPFS strategy. We are beginning to see hybrid strategies, with Unified companies, for example, outsourcing some products to selected Allies, while attempting, at the same time, to provide some Portal functions. These problems give rise to opportunities for future research.