Tight versus Loose Organizational Coupling within Inter-Firm Networks in the Enterprise Software Industry – The Perspective of Complementors

Facilitated by new standards and middleware technologies, enterprise application software is increasingly characterized by a high degree of modularity. On an organizational level, this is reflected by the goal of dominant system vendors (hubs) to form loosely-coupled hub-and-spoke networks with smaller niche players (spokes) that complement their solutions. This paper aims at explaining differences regarding the extent to which spokes strive for loosely-coupled partnerships as opposed to closely-tied relationships with a particular hub. The type of coupling is indicated by the level of hub-specific investments and the application of informal governance mechanisms. Following existing theory, the synergistic specificity between the partners’ technological, commercial, and social capital is suggested to determine the aspired type of coupling. Moreover, it is argued that a tighter coupling leads to an increased threat of opportunism. However, instead of loosening the partnership, spokes tie themselves even closer to the hub

Hypercompetition in the ERP Industry: It takes all the running to stay in place

Applying the Red Queen Theory (RQT), the study posits that an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor counters the Red Queen Effect (RQE) in the hypercompetitive ERP industry by strategically aligning itself with multiple partners to form an ecosystem that can be leveraged for growth, provide multiple opportunities for innovation, and produce and deliver a product to its customers. By carrying out a cross-case analysis of ERPCorp, its partners and rivals based on multiple qualitative interviews, the paper shows that ERPCorp was able to survive the entry process as well as adapt and avoid the competency trap by using a partner network to sell, implement and develop complementary offerings. The key finding is that in order to survive the “race”, ERPCorp has to adopt new strategies to match or exceed the actions of its rivals which creates various tensions with partners, thus requiring the ability to manage an inter-organizational network effectively

Understanding Platform Loyalty in the Cloud: A Configurational View on ISV´s Costs and Benefits

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) providers are increasingly engaged in nurturing vibrant ecosystems of independent software vendors (ISVs) by offering standardized services. However, cloud ecosystems have also been known for its fluctuation and high rates of desertion. A currently under-researched explanation for this low traction and high rates of fluctuation may lie in the fact that ISVs face considerable costs when joining and acting on a specific platform. If these costs are too high, they can rapidly outweigh the additional value generated by the ecosystem. This study therefore explains the role of different configurations of cost-inducing factors and resource benefits in influencing an ISV´s platform loyalty. By using a configurational approach based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA), we display complex interactional effects of cost and benefits as causal conditions on ISVs’ intention to stay in the ecosystem and thus provide valuable insights for both practice as well as theory on platform ecosystems

Minimizing Complementors’ Risk in Third-Party Innovation: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of Digital Platform Configurations

The emergence of platforms is shifting the locus of digital innovation to ecosystems on which numerous developers create extensions with additional functionalities. Despite all the potential benefits for complementors, however, this new organizing logic of digital innovation also introduced essential new risks. Recent studies in IS focused on risk of IT projects from a contingency perspective neglecting the complexity of ecosystems. In order to shed light on this, our work examines how app architecture as a complementor´s control mechanism and four types of ecosystem hazards shape the likelihood and impact of the risk of failure in third-party innovation. By using a configurational approach based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA), we display complex interactional effects of the causal conditions on complementors’ perception of hazardous environments and thus provide valuable insights for both practice and theory on platform ecosystems

A Multi-case Analysis of the Development of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) Business Practices

The potential of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to integrate the business functions of any organization has led to its proliferation since the 1990s. Arguably, ERP systems potentially enable an organization to become competitive, and their impact has since been extensively researched and debated. This thesis seeks to understand how ERP vendors have innovated and developed their business practices to ensure their own competitive advantage. The thesis consists of an overview wrapper and five articles. This work is based on a research methodology using case studies to understand the development of business practices in the ERP industry since the 1950s. As such, the thesis explores the journey of different ERP vendors that (1) were influenced by their environment, (2) participate in different structuring processes to develop their business practice; (3) adapt their business practices to produce product/service offerings potentially matching or exceeding the actions of their rivals; and (4) encounter challenges as they shift their business models. The thesis reveals that in order to continue to outlast the competition in a hypercompetitive environment, ERP vendors (1) refine their business practices, over time, through incremental and evolutionary changes impacting the ERP industry; (2) obtain a competitive advantage through the exploitation of core resources; (3) co-create with a partner network to maximize their resources and increase their ability to compete; and (4) realize the value proposition in terms of the business model

Recomendação de desenvolvedores externos para projetos de software baseada na análise de contribuições prévias

The software development industry has evolved in the recent years and new challenges have emerged. Among these changes came Software Ecosystems, a new development paradigm, where external contributors support software production by providing solutions that complement a common platform for these developers. Due to the large number of technologies, frameworks and domains that an ecosystem can host, an equally large number of contributors acquainted with varied topics of their knowledge and skills have also emerged. However, recruiting collaborators with desired characteristics becomes a complex task due to the varying degrees of knowledge and skill that each developer has in their various competencies. Given this, we present a architecture of a recommendation system (RS) supported by an ontology capable of recommending collaborators who have shown expertise in the topics of interest. In order to do so, the RS uses retrieval expertise techniques to score the developers´ level of knowledge about topics represented in a query. The architecture is then able to provide the contextual information of the recommendation, i.e., a visualization of where one can find the knowledge topics that led to the recommendation of each contributor. Proof of Concepts were conducted on two software ecosystems to demonstrate feasibility of the architecture, which have shown evidence that the architecture is able to perform recommendations and still offers context information, important to the decision-making process over the recommendations made.A indústria de desenvolvimento de software evoluiu nos últimos anos e novos desafios surgiram. Dentre estas mudanças surgiram os ecossistemas de software, um novo paradigma de desenvolvimento, onde colaboradores externos apoiam a produção de software ao disponibilizar soluções que complementam uma plataforma comum a estes desenvolvedores. Devido à grande diversidade de tecnologias, frameworks e domínios que um ecossistema pode abrigar, a todo momento surgem colaboradores com variados tópicos de conhecimento e habilidades. Entretanto, recrutar colaboradores com as características desejadas se torna um trabalho complexo devido aos diferentes graus de conhecimento e habilidades que cada colaborador tem em suas diversas competências. Diante disso, apresenta-se uma arquitetura de um sistema de recomendação (SR) apoiado por uma ontologia capaz de recomendar colaboradores que tenham mostrado expertise nos tópicos de interesse. Para tanto, o SR utiliza técnicas da área de expertise retrieval para pontuar o grau de aderência dos colaboradores sobre os tópicos de conhecimento representados em uma query. A arquitetura é então capaz de fornecer as informações de contexto da recomendação, ou seja, uma visualização sobre onde pode-se encontrar os tópicos de conhecimento que levaram à recomendação de cada colaborador. Provas de conceito foram realizadas sobre dois ecossistemas de software para verificar a viabilidade da arquitetura, as quais mostraram indícios de que a arquitetura é capaz de realizar recomendações, e ainda oferece informações de contexto que são importantes à tomada de decisão sobre as recomendações realizadas.CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superio

Beyond "dependent development" in a high-tech industry? The interplay between domestic institutions and transnational sectoral governance in the trajectories of emerging Polish IT firms

The present study adds to the ongoing discussions on the economic and industrial change in postcommunist Central Europe by investigating in-depth the case of a relatively successful development of two large domestic IT firms from Poland. The case is theoretically interesting because it calls into question the dominant perspective on industrial transformation in the region which focuses on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI). The presented empirical analysis uses rich historical data to reconstruct the strategies of the two Polish firms regarding: sales market operations, corporate finance, and productive organization. The study's general assumption is that the relatively successful development of the two analyzed companies has been shaped by the interplay between home-country conditions and the governance structure of the transnational enterprise IT (EIT) industry. The conducted analysis indicates, first, that the firms have benefited from a well-functioning local capital market, the domestic supply of high-skilled labor, and some characteristics of the home country sales market. Second, the study reveals that the firms' development has been conditioned by the ongoing "modularization" processes in the EIT sector. In their initially home market oriented operations, the analyzed firms focused on the downstream segments of the EIT value chain while sourcing the more high-tech components (e.g. databases) from collaborations with foreign suppliers. In general, the results of the study suggest that a more nuanced perspective on the ongoing processes of industrial change in Central Europe than the one proposed in the existing literature is needed.Die vorliegende Studie untersucht eine relativ erfolgreiche Entwicklung von zwei heimischen IT-Unternehmen aus Polen und trägt dadurch zu aktuellen Diskussionen über den Industriewandel im Mitteleuropa bei. Der analysierte Fall ist von theoretischer Relevanz, da er die dominante Perspektive auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in der Region, die eine Abhängigkeit von ausländischen Direktinvestitionen (FDI) in den Vordergrund stellt, problematisiert. Die Analyse baut auf umfangreichen historischen Daten auf, um die Strategien der zwei Unternehmen hinsichtlich Produktmarktpositionierung, Unternehmensfinanzierung und Produktionsorganisation zu rekonstruieren. Die leitende Annahme der Studie ist, dass die relativ erfolgreiche Entwicklung der beiden polnischen Firmen durch ein Zusammenspiel von länderspezifischen Kontextbedingungen und der Governance-Struktur der globalen Enterprise-IT-Industrie geprägt wurde. Die Analyse zeigt erstens, dass die Unternehmen von einem gut funktionierenden lokalen Kapitalmarkt, dem inländischen Angebot an hochqualifizierten Arbeitskräften sowie einigen Charakteristiken des Binnenmarktes profitiert haben. Zweitens zeigt die Studie, dass die Entwicklung der Unternehmen durch die Modularisierungsprozesse im globalen Enterprise-IT-Sektor bedingt war. In ihren anfänglich binnenmarkorientierten Strategien konzentrierten sich die analysierten Unternehmen auf Downstream-Segmente der EIT-Wertschöpfungskette, während sie die Hightech-Komponenten (z.B. Datenbanken) aus Kooperationen mit ausländischen Lieferanten bezogen. Die Ergebnisse der Studie weisen darauf hin, dass eine differenziertere Perspektive auf die laufenden Prozesse des Industriewandels im Mitteleuropa als in der vorhandenen Literatur erforderlich ist

From Vendors to Customers

Enterprise Systems (ES) are generally considered the price of entry for running a business. With the increased scope of ESs to encompass nearly every function or business process of a modern organization, an increasing number of different users are adopting and using the systems. These users occupy a number of different organizational roles which include a wide variety of different tasks in organizations and have very different requirements for ESs. To ensure a better fit between users and ESs, a number of ES vendors have begun to focus on reflecting the concept of organizational roles of users in their systems. Limited research has, however, addressed these “role-oriented” ESs; this dissertation attempts to provide a better understanding of them by studying their design, implementation, and use. The research design for this dissertation is based on Case Studies and the Grounded Theory Method with qualitative empirical data collected across three types of actors in an ES ecosystem: Vendors; partner companies; and customers. The findings are primarily presented in six appended research papers that are aimed at both researchers and practitioners. The main contribution of the dissertation is an improved understanding of: Representation of organizational roles in the deep and surface structures of ESs; the mapping, configuration, and tailoring of predefined systems roles to fit actual roles of users in organizations; and the potential benefits and role-related misfits of role-oriented ESs. Through discussion of the findings, the dissertation also illustrates how the design of role-oriented ESs is influenced by the different actors in an ecosystem. The dissertation also illustrates how systems, organizations, processes, and roles can be aligned during implementation by shifting basis and conceptual focus in the requirements analysis. Finally, the dissertation explains the impact of roleoriented technology on organizational performance and how this technology may influence the existing perception of the role taking process in organizations