Inter-organizational information systems depend at least as much on collaboration across organizational cultures as on the development of technical infrastructure for their success. Actor-network theory (ANT) is a useful approach for bringing together social and technical considerations. In this chapter we discuss key features of ANT and show how it might be applied to a particular case of IOIS...

The objective of this study is to identify how dimensions of organizational flexibility enable inventory flow integration, evidently an efficiency imperative, across the supply chain. The paper investigates the impact of product modularity, use of teams and IT infrastructure reconfigurability as dimensions of organizational flexibility, on inventory flow integration across the supply chain. Dat...

Information technology and social-cultural, organizational variables are considered major components to support knowledge processes in knowledge management. These components have to be carefully managed and be supported in balanced proportion for organization to create and retain greater value from their core competencies. The peculiar situation of developing countries, where there is lack of a...

A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is an organization of coordinated autonomous agents that interact in order to achieve particular, possible common goals. Considering real world organizations as an analogy, this paper proposes MAS architectural patterns for information systems which adopt concepts from organizational theories. The patterns are modeled using the i* framework which offers the notions of...

The article focuses on varying protest intensities of social movement activists in an authoritarian political environment. Drawing on a sample of participants in El Salvador’s El movimiento popular, the paper examines how structural location in the resistance movement’s multi-sectoral organizational infrastructure shapes the level of participation. Those motivated by state repression and mainta...

Information systems (IS) integration has long been regarded as the result of various information technology (IT) related problems within the IS architecture and IT infrastructure. This study takes a new approach to examining the origins of IS integration problems from an organizational context perspective. Based on a 30-month longitudinal study at a 1,050 registered bed large teaching hospital,...

As identified by the U.S. Congress, there is a national need for collaborative approaches to digital preservation services for cultural, historical, and political repositories. Responding to this need, the Library of Congress established the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in 2003 to produce a “national network of partners collaborating on digital p...

Many studies on the significance of knowledge management (KM) in the business world have been performed in recent years. Public sector KM is a research area of growing importance. Findings show that few authors specialize in the field and there are several obstacles to developing a cohesive body of literature. In order to examine their effect of the knowledge management capability [which consis...

It is widely recognized that e-commerce represents a critical resource for most business organizations. With over 1.3 billion people and double-digit economic growth, China could potentially emerge as the largest Internet and telecommunications market in the world if certain economic, environmental, and organizational barriers are effectively addressed. This chapter develops a descriptive profi...