A Study on the Scope and Determinants of Electronic Collaboration based on IT in Interorganizational Relationships

기업간 거래에서 정보기술을 활용한 전자적 협력의 범위와 선행요인에 관한 연구

This study suggests strategies which can enable to creation of new opportunities of competitive advantages while operating a long lasting and consistent business with major trading partners, based on interorganizational information systems (IOISs) specially established and installed for interorganizational transactions. Nowadays, IOISs based mechanism having been widely expanded as a conventional business infrastructure for the interorganizational transactions and/or exchanges, it is customary difficult to obtain any strongly sound advantage over the competitors who have adopted even the simplest deployment of the IOIS mechanisms. In this connection, this study intends to investigate the interorganizational collaborative activities conducted by under the auspicious of IOISs, focused on the prospect of the exploitation of IOISs rather than the implementation of the IOISs. In this study, we, firstly, suggest the concept of Electronic Collaboration which can be defined by the collaborative activities conducted by IOISs, compared to the ones conducted on off-line. In addition, we suggest the Electronic Collaboration as a multi-dimensional concept, constituted by three sub-constructs, the Electronic Information Sharing (EIS), the Electronic Joint Activity (EJA), and the construction of the Electronic Relational Knowledge Store (ERKS). Secondly, we empirically verify the effects of relational and environmental determinants on the Electronic Collaboration. In this study, the relational determinants relate to the variables created in interorganizational relationship like Trust, Influence, Relational Specific Asset-asset invested for the transaction-, and Continuity of the relationship. On the other hand, the environmental determinants relate to the variables surrounding the relationship which are difficult to control. We consider Product Complexity, Technological Uncertainty, and Market Variability as the domain of the environmental determinants. To test our hypotheses, we conducted both paper-based survey and online-based survey. After refining the data with missing responses, a total of 150 data was used for analysis. The results were as follows : Firstly, it is statistically significant that the Electronic Collaboration is composed of EIS, EJA, and ERKS. In particular, the results imply that the firms are able to accumulate relational knowledge base as well as to exchange information or knowledge, and to conduct joint activities through effort to further expand the Electronic Collaboration. Secondly, we have verified the individual effects of the relational and the environmental determinants on the Electronic Collaboration. Product Complexity has been revealed as the most influential variable affecting the Electronic Collaboration. Next, Interorganizational Trust and Technological Uncertainty, in that order, have been seen to have significant effects on the Electronic Collaboration. In other words, when products or services seem to be difficult to standardize, and the core technologies seem to rapidly change, the need for the Electronic Collaboration increase. In addition, the observation dictates that the interorganizational trust turns out to be a critical variable in building a relationship and in seeking further collaboration. The results, further, illustrate that the environmental determinants are relatively more effective than the relational determinants, which is not consistent with a few prior researches relational determinants emphasized. It is because this study doesn't consider the size of the firm. A few researchers have given an emphasis on the relational determinants like trust and influence, especially from the perspective of small firms in interorganizational relationship. However, in our study, where all the sizes of the firms are contained, electronic collaboration is considerably affected by the environmental determinants.