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's choice to perform tasks itself or to 'outsource' such tasks to others (the trade-off between 'make' or 'buy')? Business network theory places the company in a 'business network', 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 mor...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ECIS
• Authors: Diederik W. van Liere, Lorike Hagdorn van der Meijden, Martijn R. Hoogeweegen, Peter H. M. Vervest
• Keywords: Business Network Theory, Business Networks, ECIS 2004, Information Technology, Networks Require Modularization