Organizational Performance of a Firm in a Modular Business Network

The organizational capabilities to interact with others have been greatly improved as a result of modern information and communications technologies: Nowadays a company can maintain more relationships with more companies at much lower costs than before. What impact does this increased interaction capability have on the company\u27s choice to perform tasks itself or to \u27outsource\u27 such tasks to others (the trade-off between \u27make\u27 or \u27buy\u27)? Business network theory places the company in a \u27business network\u27, a web of business partners linked together in a flexible way to produce different outputs depending on the customer requirements. Previous research suggests that such business networks require modularization of the products, the processes and the firm in order to be effective. Firms would be able to share their core capabilities and therefore can respond faster, and more effective, to different requirements. Are business networks indeed more dynamic and more \u27agile\u27 than other forms of inter-organizational co-operation like alliances, joint-ventures or markets? More precisely, what is the impact of the structure of a business network on the performance of the participating actor organizations? The objective of this study is to define and understand this relationship: business network structure and organizational performance. In this Research in Progress Paper we present our preliminary set of hypotheses and our testing instrument, a management game called the Business Networking Game that simulates modular business networks

Towards EDI Enabled Cost Efficient Supply Chain Flexibility

This paper describes a new modelling technique to visualise and assess the impact of EDI enabled process redesign options for a supply chain and its participants, both in terms of flexibility and costs. Flexibility is defined here as the ability to meet a wide variety of customer demand (versatility) in a short period of time (agility). The research claim is that supply chains and organisations are better capable of meeting a wide variety of demand, when EDI enabled process redesign options are implemented which both increase flexibility and reduce costs. Four applications of the new modelling technique, which is called the modular design approach, in the air cargo transportation industry support this clai