U.s. Electric Utility Industry
نویسندگان
چکیده
1 Recent work has shown that a firm’s plural sourcing strategy, which determines how much it chooses to make versus how much it chooses to buy, requires consideration of the complementarities and constraints that affect the differential advantages of making and buying. Elaborating on this perspective, we theorize how (mis)fit between a firm’s plural sourcing strategy of simultaneously making and buying and its development of information technology (IT) enabled interfirm and intrafirm process integration capabilities influences firm performance in deregulated markets. We position our theory development and empirical tests in the context of the power-generation segment of the U.S. electric utility industry (EUI), an asset-intensive industry that has been deregulated to promote the separation of key value chain activities (i.e., generation, transmission, and distribution) and the development of wholesale energy markets. We draw on the transaction cost economics, coordination costs, and IT capabilities perspectives to theorize that a firm achieves fit (realizing performance benefits) by increasing market sourcing intensity (MSI)—or, how much it buys relative to how much it makes— and developing IT-enabled interfirm process integration capability for external coordination with the market, or misfit (realizing performance penalties) by increasing MSI and developing IT-enabled intrafirm process integration capability for coordinating internal production. We collated data from archival sources for 342 utility firms in the power-generation segment to construct a panel dataset for the period 1994–2004 on
منابع مشابه
Learning Strategies in Smart Grid Adoption: An Explorative Study in the U.S. Electric Utility Industry
The U.S. electric utility industry is facing a number of challenges today. In response, utilities are investing in smart grid technologies to mitigate them. Yet, smart grid adoption presents significant knowledge barriers to utilities. This study aims to advance the understanding of IT knowledge challenges in smart grid adoption by focusing on three research questions: 1) what knowledge require...
متن کاملA National Analysis of Toxic Released from Electric Power Plants
As of 1998, electric utility companies burning coal or oil are required to report their annual releases of toxic chemicals to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a national compilation of multimedia (air, water, land) releases of over 600 chemicals and chemical categories designated as toxic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). TRI reports for 1998 must be filed with EPA by July 1...
متن کاملA National Analysis of Toxic Releases from Electric Power Plants
As of 1998, electric utility companies burning coal or oil are required to report their annual releases of toxic chemicals to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a national compilation of multimedia (air, water, land) releases of over 600 chemicals and chemical categories designated as toxic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). TRI reports for 1998 must be filed with EPA by July 1...
متن کاملGasVue and the Magnesium Industry: Advanced SF6 Leak Detection
Concerns about atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases and operation costs are converging to increase incentives for both the electric utility and magnesium industries to rapidly locate and repair equipment leaks (Irwin, 1997). The primary culprit is sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), an invisible, non-hazardous, inert gas with near-perfect dielectric properties that is used as an insulating gas in h...
متن کامل