Despite the inherent risk arising from separating buyers and sellers, networked online marketplaces are proliferating. We describe how online auction marketplaces take advantage of institutional structures to build buyer trust in auction sellers, mitigate risk, increase satisfaction, and promote transaction intentions. It is hypothesized, based on institutional trust (Zucker 1986), that buyer trust in auction sellers can be increased, beyond past experience with sellers, through structural assurances, such as buyer-driven certification, auction house escrows, and credit card guarantees. We examined buyer transaction intentions, mediated by trusting beliefs, risk reduction, and satisfaction. The model is tested with 274 buyers in Amazon’s online auction marketplace. The results support the hypotheses, highlighting the importance of institution-based trust in online networks. Implications are discussed. Keywords: Institution-based trust, online auctions, institutional structures, certification, escrows, third-party guarantees

Electronic integration - the use of information technology to re-engineer key business processes and business relations, enables new forms of organization that transcend traditional industry and firm boundaries. Indeed the electronic integration strategies alter the fundamental structure of both firms as well as their environments, requiring a shift in the study of organizations from the level of a focal firm to that of the business network. The business network represents the pattern of interdependent relationships between the activities of a given firm and those of other firms in its competitive environment which influence each others' strategies.

In recent years, we have witnessed remarkable growth in various forms of co-operation among organisations. There has been a considerable increase in inter-organizational alliances during the 1980s, particularly in high-technology industries (Haagedoorn 1993; 1995; Hergert and Morris 1988; Mowery 1988). Within the US biotechnology industry, for example, firms without any formal cooperative ties to other firms have become increasingly rare, while the connectivity of firms within the industry has increased y significantly (Powell et al. 1996). In the hospital systems software industry, inter-firm co-operation was unusual up until 1970, increased slightly in the 1,970s, but showed significant grow th in the 1980s and 1990s (Mitchell and Singh 1996). A similar pattern can be detected for the car industry. According to Helper (1991), beginning 'm the 1980s US car manufacturers have been reducing their degree of vertical integration and have increasingly relied on longer-term contracts with a limited number of tightly linked suppliers. Many European ear companies also adopted this strategy at around the same time (Altmann and Sauer 1989; Morris and Imrie 1991; Turnbull et al. 1989). In other industries inter-organizational co-operation has been a more longstanding practice. In construction, for example, consortia and enduring relationships are wellentrenched forms of organizing large projects (Eccles 1981). In the US film industry, after World War II progressively outsourced production of feature films while retaining finance and distribution (Robins 1993); therefore for some time now, persistent patterns of contracting are related less to format organisations such as the studios, but crystallize out of relatively stable networks of producers, directors, cinematographers, actors, and musicians (Faulkner and Anderson 1987). Regional industrial

New types of cooperation between companies in the manufacturing sector are coming into being. Since nowadays the creation of and involvement in supply chains is for most companies standard practice, new forms of cooperation are now emerging: production networks. The paper describes current developments in the field of production networks along with techniques and methods for their operation and management. Keywords: Manufacturing, Production network, Production planning and control

The Quick Response (QR) program is a hierarchical suite of information technologies and applications designed to improve the performance of retailers. Consultants advise retailers to adopt the program wholesale, implying that more and higher levels of technology are better than less technology and lower levels. Academicians, on the other hand, argue that good technology is “appropriate” technology. That is, firms should adopt only those technologies that suit the specific strategic directions pursued by the firm. Who is right? Which approach to investing in IT yields better performance results? Surprisingly, this cross-sectional survey of 80 specialty retailers found more support for the practitioners ’ claims than for the academicians’. Adoption of the QR program at a minimal level was associated with higher performance, although there was no performance impact due to higher levels of QR use. Firms did appear to match their IT usage to their business strategies, but there was no linkage between strategic alignment and firm performance, and there was surprisingly little variation in business or IT strategy. In short, the findings of our study suggest that both practitioners and academicians need to refine their theories and advice about what makes IT investments pay off.

The current industry-driven trend of providing flexible e-services lays the ground for the new research area “service value networks ” (SVNs). We observe a rising number of industry-oriented publications provided by research departments of large companies such as IBM or SAP as well as the fact that more and more IS conferences offer special tracks on that issue. However, when it comes to formalizing and economically analyzing such SVNs that offer joint complex services to service customers, scientific approaches are in their infancy. We intend to fill this research gap by providing a clear understanding of service value networks by defining their characteristics, their structure, and their components. Mapping these aspects into a formalized model, we intend to establish a reference point for future work in the area of service value networks. 1.

words) Firms face an environment changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Market opportunities in particular can arise and disappear in a short time. Unfortunately, the speed with which organizations can adapt their strategies and competencies to meet these opportunities remains limited. We argue that firms can address these individual limitations by cooperating with others for access to market opportunities and needed competencies. In this paper, we present a process theory of how a network of firms can reliably engineering and deliver products in the face of rapid market changes. In this theory, the success of the network is predicated on 1) identification and development of competencies, 2) identification and facing of market opportunities, 3) marshalling of competencies and 4) a short-term cooperative effort. Our theory is based on the experiences of Virtual Factory, an organized network for regional cooperation in the manufacturing industry. 3 Index terms Virtual organization Virtual Factory project Virtual Factory project Core competencies Resource-based view of the firm Competency rallying Market-facing Dynamic capabilities? Concurrent engineering? 4 opportunities in particular can arise and disappear again in a short time. However, the speed with which organizations can adapt to changes remains limited. We refer to this situation, where the environment changes more rapidly than organizations can adapt, as a "turbulent environment". Turbulent environments re-pose two central questions addressed by theories of the firm: How does the firm behave in its market? and How is work organized? In stable environments, the answers provided to these questions distinguish two broad types of theories of the firm. In the first type of theory---an outside-in perspective--...

ii Designing the new intranet is about exploiting web technology in an organisational context so that the users can better utilise the intranet from a knowledge management perspective. This means to take advantage of the specific features that characterise web technology, to take advantage of the tangible traces of everyday work activities, and to take advantage of the fact that actions on an intranet are not isolated events. The pervading theme in this thesis is how to design the intranet to activate the users rather than a preoccupation with technology per se. The ambition has been to understand why intranets are being underutilised and to influence the way intranets are understood. Another objective has been to design a new framework for intranet implementations in general and for knowledge creation and knowledge sharing in particular. The research described in this thesis has taken place in an industrial environment and in close collaboration with the members of the organisation under study. The results apply to and are relevant to large and/or geographically disperse organisations, where the members do not know or know of each other and the organisation as a whole does not know what it knows. Further, leveraging the knowledge of the employees becomes increasingly important in the post-industrial society, where organisations depend on networks, co-operation, and openness to achieve a competitive edge. This thesis consists of five papers and a framing introduction. Papers 1, 2, and 3 deal with enacted knowledge and competence, whereas papers 4 and 5 are targeted towards innovation and knowledge creation. The introduction places the papers in a context and presents the contributions; (1) the application prototypes, (2) the papers, and (3) the intranet design framework.

The purpose of the study presented in this article aims at broadening our understanding of information and concomitant aspects of a non-bureaucratic organizational design. With current changes in organizational environments, the century-long domination of the bureaucratic organization is being shaken. New organizational designs have been proposed as alternatives to the bureaucracy, including the information-based organization, networked organization, and adhocracy. Our knowledge of these designs, however, is still meager. This particularly applies to their information aspects, such as the role of information technology (IT), and exchanges of information and knowledge. In order to fill the void, an organizational design which will be called the “non-traditional organization ” was created on the basis of relevant literature and was preliminarily tested on a sample drawn from the public accounting industry. The study discovered a strong positive relationship between the amount of IT usage and non-traditional dimensions, invoking the notion of an organic, “informated ” organization. This relationship primarily rests on the relationships IT forms with centralization and formalization (both negative), and trust and communication beyond team boundaries (both positive). Information and knowledgerelated interactions are in relation with team-based accountability in this networked, “information-rich ” organization. Communication beyond team boundaries serves several purposes, including integration and creation of a dialogue-based, adhocratic, “interactive ” organization. Hierarchy appears to be the most resilient dimension of the traditional organization in the sample studied. These findings bear implications for understanding new organizational designs. 1. Research Problem The century-long domination of the bureaucratic organization in U.S. business is being shaken. From Drucker’s (1987/1990) laconic acknowledgment of this thesis, to its more recent comprehensive treatments (e.g., Heckscher &

and Keith Pavitt helped improving along various drafts of the work. 1 2