Organizations enter alliances with each other to access critical resources, but they rely on information from the network of prior alliances to determine with whom to cooperate. These new alliances modify the existing network, prompting an endogenous dynamic between organizational action and network structure that drives the emergence of interorganizational networks. Testing these ideas on alliances formed in three industries over nine years, the authors show that the probability of a new alliance between specific organizations increases with their interdependence, but also with their prior mutual alliances, common third parties, and joint centrality in the alliance network. The differentiation of the emerging network structure, however, mitigates the effect of interdependence and enhances the effect of joint centrality on new alliance formation. 3

similarities may be useful for some purposes (see Frost & King, 2001 [chapter 1]), but abstractions may present problems in actually accomplishing collaborative work. Second, the natural tendency to establish local territories may interfere with co-workers' identification with the larger collective, such as the distributed project group. Ambiguity of membership reduces group identity (Brown & Wade, 1987; see also Armstrong and Cole, 2001 [chapter 7]). Effects of Spontaneous Communication Distances between offices and work locations possibly have their highest impact on group functioning through their effect on informal, spontaneous communication opportunities (Brockner & Swap, 1976; Ebbesen, Kjos, & Konecni, 1976, Hays, 1985; Kraut & Streeter, 1995; Newcomb, 1981). That is, people who work in proximate offices run into one another at the water cooler, coffee machine, and copier. They see one another come and go to meetings. They meet in the lunch room. These casual encounters increase ...

This paper seeks to uncover dominant configurations of inter-organizational relationships across the USA and Japan in the automotive industry. We integrate relevant theoretical concepts from transaction cost economics, organization theory and political economy to develop a conceptual model of inter-organizational relationships based on the fit between information processing needs and information processing capabilities. This model is employed to collect data on 447 buyer-supplier relationships in these two countries. We empirically uncover a set of five naturally occurring patterns of inter-organizational relationships. These configurations provide rich explanations of the complexity of interorganizational relationships as well as offer differential insights across US and Japan. We discuss implications for further research pertaining to the logic and development of configurations.

Information systems researchers have a long tradition of drawing on theories from disciplines such as economics, computer science, psychology, and general management and using them in their own research. Because of this, the information systems field has become a rich tapestry of theore-1 Jane Webster was the accepting senior editor for this paper. MISQ REVIEW tical and conceptual foundations. As new theories are brought into the field, particularly theories that have become dominant in other areas, there may be a benefit in pausing to assess their use and contribution in an IS context. The purpose of this paper is to explore and critically evaluate use of the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) by IS researchers. The paper provides a brief review of resourcebased theory and then suggests extensions to make the RBV more useful for empirical IS research. First, a typology of key IS resources is presented, and these are then described using six traditional resource attributes. Second, we emphasize the particular importance of looking at both resource complementarity and moderating factors when studying IS resource effects on firm performance. Finally, we discuss three considerations that IS researchers need to address when using the RBV empirically. Eight sets of propositions are advanced to help guide future research. Keywords: Resource-based view, organizational impacts of IS, information systems resources, competitive advantage, IS strategic planning, information resource management

Loose coupling is a common way of organizing collaboration in work groups, but it has not been studied extensively in CSCW. In this paper, we consider the patterns of work that are seen in mobile groups that adopt a loosely coupled collaboration style. We report findings from interviews and fieldwork with teams of workers who deliver home healthcare services. In these teams, workers are mobile, widely dispersed, and autonomous, and team members communicate with each other only intermittently. Based on these findings, we identify and discuss four work patterns that occur in loosely coupled mobility: discretionary collaboration and effort thresholds, implicitly shared information, asynchronous communication and coordination, and barriers to synchrony. We consider the implications of these findings for the design of CSCW technologies.

The present study investigates how chief executive officers in the Canadian telecommunications industry acquire and use information about the external business environment, an information seeking activity known as environmental scanning. Data were collected by a nationwide questionnaire survey and several focused interviews. Of the 113 CEOs in the study population, 67 returned completed questionnaires, thus giving a response rate of 59 percent. Personal interviews were then conducted with eight of the respondents. The chief executives collectively perceive the Technological, Customer, and Competition environmental sectors to have the greatest Perceived Strategic Uncertainty – these sectors were perceived to be the most strategic, variable and complex. For each environmental sector, the Amount of Scanning of the sector is positively correlated with the Perceived Strategic Uncertainty of that sector. Generally, the chief executives use multiple, complementary sources in environmental scanning. Personal sources such as customers and subordinate staff are very important in both scanning and decision making, and they are used more frequently than impersonal sources. Nonetheless, impersonal sources such as publications and reports are also frequently used in scanning. In decision making, environmental information from internal sources is used more frequently than that from external sources. For many of the information sources, the frequency of source use is

More than a decade ago, Low and MacMillan identified three elements indispensable to an understanding of entrepreneurial success: process, context, and outcomes. Since their critique, three important advances include (a) a shift in theoretical emphasis from the characteristics of entrepreneurs as individuals to the consequences of their actions, (b) a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurs use knowledge, networks, and resources to construct firms, and (c) a more sophisticated taxonomy of environmental forces at different levels of analysis (population, community, and society) that affect entrepreneurship. Although our knowledge of entrepreneurial activities has increased dramatically, we still have much to learn about how process and context interact to shape the outcome of entrepreneurial efforts. From an evolutionary approach, process and context (strategy and environment) interact in a recursive continuous process, driving the fate of entrepreneurial efforts. Thus, integrating co...

Incremental product innovation is a critically important competitive factor in established industries. Firms in the cardiac pacemaker industry often benefit by bringing incremental innovations to market even though the new products may cannibalize the sales of existing profitable products. The more often an industry incumbent was among the first to introduce important incremental product innovations the greater its market share in the industry, while adopting innovations that had been introduced by competitors had a small positive relationship with greater market share. The greater the number of competitors that introduced similar products, the greater the market share of firms that were first to market. Greater market share, in turn, reduced the likelihood of business dissolution, while introducing important incremental innovations provided little or no reduction in the likelihood of business dissolution net of the effects of the market share that the firm achieved. The results apply most directly to industries in which buyers incur moderate switching costs. This paper investigates how an industry incumbent’s market share and business survival are affected by the firm’s tendency to lead or follow its competitors when introducing important incremental product innovations. We define important incremental product innovations as refinements and extensions of established designs that result in substantial price or functional benefits to users (Dosi, 1982; Henderson and Clark, 1990). A substantial literature addresses entry timing influences on market share and survival, but much of this work either addresses Key words: incremental innovations; business survival; market share; industry incumbents paradigmatic technical change, focuses on entry into new markets, or treats new product introductions as isolated events (e.g. Biggadike, 1979;

Previous research suggests that the construction industry is characterised by (1) particular complexity factors owing to industry specific uncertainties and interdependencies, and (2) inefficiency in operations. The aim of this paper is to analyse the operations and behaviour of firms as a means to deal with complexity. Our observations indicate that the industry as a whole appears to be featured as a loosely coupled system. Taking this as a starting point the couplings among activities, resources and actors are analysed in different dimensions. The pattern of couplings builds on three interdependent layers; tight couplings in individual projects, loose couplings in the permanent network and collective adaptations in 'the community of practice'. The paper concludes that the pattern of couplings seems to favour short-term productivity while hampering innovation and learning.

. In this paper, we pose and motivate a challenge, namely the need for a new science of multiagent systems. We propose that this new science should be grounded, theoretically on a richer conception of sociality, and methodologically on the extensive use of computational modelling for real-world applications and social simulations. Here, the steps we set forth towards meeting that challenge are mainly theoretical. In this respect, we provide a new model of multi-agent systems that reflects a fully explicated conception of cognition, both at the individual and the collective level. Finally, the mechanisms and principles underpinning the model will be examined with particular emphasis on the contributions provided by contemporary organisation theory. 1.