Strategic Choices of Inter-Organizational Information Systems: A Customer-Supplier Network Perspective

As more and more cooperate in a networked manner via various inter-organizational information systems (IOISs), it is important to choose appropriate IOISs for different types of organizations in the network environment. In this study, we analyzed customer-supplier relationships among organizations in five industries using social network analysis (SNA) methods and empirical data, aiming to help organizations to choose appropriate IOISs strategically. Three types of customer-supplier networks were identified in our analysis: customer-centric, supplier-centric and balanced networks. We then propose how to choose appropriate IOISs for the firms in each of these networks/industries and discussed the pros and cons of the choices. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical research that applied SNA methods to study customer-supplier networks in the context of inter-organizational information systems.