Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 including information science researchers, probably don’t expect people to use scientific publications for this purpose. In other interviews, people told us that they construct corporate identities from online business information and use these to profile prospective business partners. “Before we start doing business with any company, we always research the company. We will search financially about the company, business strengths, their marketing plans. We’ll look at all of the press releases that they’ve made. We’ll look at the key players in the company--get bio’s on those, histories, where they came from, where they studied, you know, who they’ve done business with in the past. Depending on the type of relationship that we want to develop with this company, we will know as much about them as we do about ourselves.” (JP94102O.TRN:SJl) Based on these, and some other early indications, we began to see that organizations commonly use 01 resources during relationship building and mediation seeking activities. Perhaps we could associate these activities with organizational demand for 01 resources. If we could pinpoint how and when organizations build relationships with other organizations or seek mediation through professional services, and if we could identify the role of 01 services in those activities, we might understand something fundamental about 01 resource demand. Therefore, we have designed our study to describe and analyze: How and when does online information resource use mediate interorganizational relationships? And when do other resources, such as print-based media or personal contacts, mediate interorganizational relationships? The information seeking literature, on the other hand, describes studies which include a sense of context and which do theorize about demand. But these researchers tend to underestimate 01 resource use because they adopt closed system models of information seeking behavior-- they don’t use open systems models which foreground interorganizational activity. Rather than stressing the interdependence of the organization and its environment, as open system models do, closed system models tend to overlook environmental influences [8, 91. Thus, much of the empirical research that information scientists have done on 01 resource use assumes high demand or assumes that organizations adopt internally cooperative modes of interaction and information sharing, but ignore cooperative or competitive interactions with other organizations in the environment [ 10, 11, 121. However, organizations do not always interact cooperatively; they often compete fiercely with each other, and interdepartmentally. Some information systems researchers have examined this contingency of system use [13,8]. They have grounded their studies in organization theory, and they address the influence of incentive structures, career interests and interorganizational networks on the use of information systems. They do not specifically address the demand for 01 resources, but their studies do suggest that organization theory might explain how incentive structures and interorganizational relationships could generate 01 resource demand. Interorganizational Relationships in Markets and Organizational Fields So, the information science literature helps us understand 01 resource use in cooperative, high demand contexts. But it doesn’t provide much insight into interorganizational relationships or mediation activities, which we think might influence demand. If organization systems researchers theory applies, as information suggest, it should help explain a common example of 01 resource use like this one: “I got a big urgent call a couple of days ago from a guy in the regulatory department in Chicago, who was trying to find Chemical Abstracts registry numbers for impurities in a product we sell because the EPA demands them. They have to be on the label, and for some reason they weren’t. So, we had about eleven substances we had to find registry numbers for for the label. And if we didn’t do it by this afternoon, then the company in question--the partner or the distributor--was going to stop doing business with us, or threatened to, as of tomorrow at five Information Science on 01 Resources This framing of our study requires us to understand what is known about 01 resource use, interorganizational relationships and mediation, so that we might begin to develop an appropriate theory about organizational 01 resource demand. First, we examined the information research literature on these topics, then expanded our examination to include theoretical explanations of organizational processes, which addressed our interorganizational focus more directly. In our review of the information retrieval literature, we found research about the use of 01 resources, but the studies all begin by assuming a strong demand. These researchers investigate human-computer interface usability and content usability, but they frequently overestimate use because their studies decontextualize 01 resource use in an important way--they assume demand. 83 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 It’s that kind of thing.” o’clock, see. (DL950112.TRN: 19) This informant used an 01 resource to get the Did interorganizational information he needed. relationships influence this use? How might organization theorists explain the relationships between the company, the EPA and the distributor alluded to here? Two kinds of organization theories (cf. Scott [9:100- 1011 for a theoretical model classification) identify incentives and interorganizational relationships that may influence the demand for 01 resources: 1. Porter [14, 151 and Hannan and Freeman [16] have developed extensive theoretical explanations of organizational interactions in competitive populations. Their open system models predict the trajectories of evolving industries, and they prescribe and maintaining establishing for strategies competitive advantage in stable and turbulent environments. 2. Scott [9] and Powell and DiMaggio [17] have developed an institutional theory of organizational fields (i.e. networks of diverse organizations that work together, such as a manufacturing firm, its banks, its advertising and executive search firms, its suppliers, etc.) to describe the dynamics of Along with interaction. interorganizational DiMaggio [18], they suggest that institutional practices of organizations within a field and environmental factors, which bear on the organizational field, influence and constrain strategic practices among member organizations. These theorists suggest several different organizational dynamics that can motivate professionals to seek information (from contacts, printed reports, and 01 resources) about other firms. Porter and Hannan and Freeman identify customer, supplier, regulator and competitor relationships as the primary influences on information demand. They characterize organizations as forming strategic relationships to gain competitive advantage within their field or industry, and they identify information gathering activities as supporting strategic decision-making activities. Scott and Powell and DiMaggio take an institutional view. They would see the adversarial relationships of the DA’s office and the Public Defender’s office as constructed by judicial institutions. But they also focus on the dynamics of the interorganizational field. They describe how professional networks, like lawyers and accountants, have mediated the interactions of organizations and the flow of information in and between organizations. Corporate owners and managers extend the constellation of other organizations that they deal with based on their beliefs about the character of those organizations. Consultants and law firms will gather background 84 information about the financial dealings, product lines or prior litigation of a new partner or potential customer. These professional networks facilitate interorganizational contacts. These organizational theories provide us with an initial set of interorganizational relationships that we will be interested in analyzing as 01 resource demand competitor partnering relationships, generators: relationships, communication relationships, regulatory adversarial affiliations, professional alliances, relationships and hierarchical relationships. They provide some insight about the context of our earlier example (where an agrochemical producer was trying to maintain a strategic relationship with a distributor who was trying to maintain a compliant relationship with a regulatory agency), and how the interorganizational relationships associated with gaining competitive advantage through core competency concentration and outsourcing might intersect to motivate the use of an 01 resource. Networks and Intermediaries We had not originally considered that professional networks could motivate the use of 01 resources. However, the high-usage firms where we interviewed employed professionals who belonged to well-developed networks, like lawyers, scientists and information specialists. DiMaggio’s discussion of professionals as the traditional mediators of interorganizational relationships helped us see this mediation component as an important The types of mediation these part of our study. professionals provide depends on the nature of their professional services. A market analyst giving investment advice would provide value-laden mediation. An information specialist gathering research data might try to provide mediation more transparently, as if the end-user had accessed the data herself. 01 resources and services also provide an often unacknowledged mediation between the information provider and the information consumer. DiMaggio doesn’t discuss professional intermediaries in terms of how they share and interpret information or the resources they use, but social network theorists do address this concern. Granovetter’s 1191 work shows that social networks play a critical role in the flow of information and the use of information resources. And Krackhardt [20] has enhanced social network theory to predict how patterns of sharing information influence intruorganizational interactions. Clegg [21] discusses interorganizational interactions and suggests that information technologies (IT) may play an enabling role in changing traditional modes of interorganizational mediation as organizations grow “not by hiring more people, but by initiating more Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 sub-contractual relations with other organizations” [22:12]. In other words, the extended use of IT, including 01 resources and services, may alter the dynamics of interorganizational mediation and the roles of traditional intermediaries. These studies encourage us to examine social networks as we develop our description of 01 resource use and search for generators of organizational demand. Researchers have studied examples of these types of networks, partnerings and competitor or adversary relationships within the legal profession and the biotechnology industry, but have not linked their research to the use of 01 resources [23,24,25]. Some 01 service interorganizational contacts [18]. providers funnel their information resources, like LEXIS, Westlaw and DIALOG, directly into this social infrastructure by providing free services to law schools and information science programs. And we have seen, as in our second example, that trained organization professionals regularly access the contents of 01 databases for competitive intelligence gathering on industry competitors or potential business partners. The research reports and case files, that information specialists and other intermediaries compile, may guide others in organizationally strategic activities. Some of the most successful online services trace their origins to early 1970’s outgrowths of government defense contractors, like Lockheed’s DIALOG, while others were spawned by wire services and business news publishers in the US and Europe, like Dow Jones and Reuters. Media giants like Reed Publishing now own some of the more well-known services, such as LEXIS and NEXIS. But the online industry still supports a complex array of competing and cooperating organizations. (See Figure 1.) Information providers compile the database contents from original sources, like the New York Times, or financial abstracting services, like Dun and Bradstreet, and they provide some level of data integrity. They may contract with online service vendors, like Mead Data Central, to make that information commercially available. The online service vendors then work together with telecommunications carriers, like AT&T, to ensure that their services are internationally accessible to information intermediaries and end-users 24-hours a day. KRI, Law Firms and Biotech Companies Our literature review provided some understanding of 01 resource use, interorganizational relationships and mediation, that we could use to guide our study about organizational 01 resource demand. We obtained a good set of relationships that organizations establish and maintain. We have a good idea of who might be involved in those processes: e.g. marketing departments, business consultants, and intellectual property law firms. And we know that they use a variety of print-based and electronic- based media, as well as personal contacts, to do that. Professional groups, like the California Bar Association or the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, facilitate those personal contacts by providing networking opportunities for individuals associated with organizational competitors. These professional networks provide a basis for b I lvpI I 1 I NEWS Modem 1 SERVICES I Regulatory Data, Financial Formatted Information 1 ABSTRACTING SERVICES II I ONLINE SERVICE VENDOR Figure 1. Interactions among online industry organizations and information services 85 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29)
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Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 The information contained within 01 resources covers a broad spectrum of topics and formats; but not everyone can use this information. Researchers guided by various perspectives have studied the usability aspects of 01 resources at several different levels. They have looked at the type of information available and whether people have the educational skills to use and understand it 126, 271. They have analyzed the form the information takes and have tried to make searching easier and more effective [28, 291. They have examined the nature of relevant information and how experts or busy managers determine relevance [30, 311. And they have identified the roles of people who search online, such as intermediaries who broker or reformat information [12], and the organizational incentive structures that discourage people from contributing information to online databases [13]. These researchers have identified important constraints imposed by existing technologies and patterns of organizing work, and they have made helpful suggestions for removing those barriers to use, such as developing more flexible search engines, devising better information classification schemes and revising organizational processes. However, despite these obstacles, organizations within certain industries have found particular 01 resources useful and usable. 01 resource usage statistics compiled over the past two decades have shown that the professional/legal and pharmaceutical/biotech industries are heavy users of 01 resources [l, 2, 31. Both industries have core 01 resources provided expressly for their use, like LEXIS and Westlaw for legal firms or Medlars, CAS and Genbank for pharmaceutical and biotech research. Interestingly, in addition to using their own specialized 01 resources heavily, organizations from both industries are among the top users of DIALOG databases, with annual usage revenues reaching $120,000 or more. Knight-Ridder Information Services (KRI, formerly DIALOG) is a major 01 service provider. The company providers to offer a contracts with information differentiated set of databases and services. Its 600 databases contain a variety of general interest information, like full-text news articles. And there are patent databases and biomedical databases that consulting firms, law firms and biotech companies use routinely, like patent indexes, trademarks and drug information. But these customers frequently access other types of databases which contain information that is specifically useful for determining the character of an organizational partner or competitor, like company profiles, market analyses and product reviews. These databases provide information supplemental to the core 01 resources of these communities, and KRI training services promote the use of these databases for market and competitive intelligence functions. This approach has been successful for KRI, and it ranks among the top three 01 resource providers, which together control 85% of 01 resource use and 93% of the annual revenues of this $2 billion business [3]. We have, therefore, contextualized our guiding research questions by examining how and when 01 databases in resources in general, and DIALOG particular, mediate the interorganizational relationships of law firms and biotech companies. And when do other resources, such as print-based media or personal contacts, mediate those interorganizational relationships? Methods and Research Project Coordination We could have chosen to study 01 resource use and interorganizational relationships by quantifying online, professional and organizational connections in terms of how often law firms and biotech companies use 01 resources, how much money they spend online, how much information they use, how many partnerships they form and how long those relationships endure. Much of this information exists in the form of market analyses and industry surveys, and we will conduct a significant part of our analysis by triangulating our research findings with these studies. Therefore, we can focus our data collection and analysis activities by following an interpretive case study methodology. This approach allows us to identify patterns of interaction which characterize the “how” and “when” of interorganizational relationship formation and the roles of 01 resources and intermediaries in those processes. From these patterns, we hope to identify what generates 01 resource demand. We are conducting our study in two phases: a pilot study and a systematic study. We began the pilot study in September, 1994; and we will discuss our preliminary results in another section of this paper. The systematic study officially began in August, 199.5, and we expect to complete it by December, 1996. Site Selection We are selecting our sample of organizations from among KRI’s professional and biotech customers. These customers support professional and interorganizational networks, and are likely to use a wide variety of 01 resources, in addition to print-based materials and interpersonal resources. We will select sites from a sample within two areas in California where there is an active professional/legal practice and a viable pharmaceutical/biotech industry: Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Within these areas, we will select a number of professional firms and biotech companies which KRI reports as Top Tier, Middle Tier 86 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 and Bottom Tier users, as measured by revenue to KRI. We will also evaluate statistics on company size, organization and revenues to try to get a mixture among the selected companies. We are restricting our study to commercial sites, because this eliminates organizations for whom research and knowledge production is an end in itself and 01 resource use and development is a core activity. In this way, we hope to concentrate our study on sites which are using 01 resources in activities which supplement core production tasks, such as the mediation of interorganizational relationships. We expect our final site selection distribution to include a total of twelve to sixteen (12-16) firms. These sites, along with the KRI organization itself, comprise the organizations of this case study. Data Collection and Interviews We will integrate positivist and interpretivist analyses [32] as we conduct our descriptive case study [33]. The explanations of open rational systems theorists and institutionalists, which we identified earlier, will guide the development of our description of 01 resource use. We will use KRI’s databases in site selection and in preparation for our interviews as we seek to understand the business context of professional and biotech firms. We will get Dun & Bradstreet information on each firm, and we will keep track of site activity by setting alerts in relevant databases. The primary source of data will be intensive interviews conducted at each site. At KRI, we are interviewing product marketing directors, 01 resource and service development managers and liaison personnel. We will also gather product literature and attend KRI training classes on basic usage techniques and on competitive intelligence research. At professional firms, we are interviewing consultants, accountants, librarians, paralegals, associate attorneys and firm partners. In biotech companies, we are interviewing information center directors, information specialists, scientists, marketing managers and directors of strategic partnering units. The number of contacts at each site will depend on the willingness and ability of each firm to contribute time and personnel to our study project. We will depend on inside referrals to develop a nested interviewing approach at each site. Wherever possible, we will also observe the use of KRI resources and services in the day-to-day activities of those that we interview. We expect these interviews and observations to provide preliminary evidence of interorganizational relationships which have been mediated in some way by the use of 01 resources. But, in order to verify the formal establishment of those relationships, we will examine market reports, product announcements, press releases and trade articles. Additionally, we are attending association meetings and seminars of the online industry. As we talk with professionals, we will ask about their education and level of expertise in their field. Research suggests that experts routinely gather less information during decision-making activities than do non-experts [30]. However, we will not limit our interviews with professionals to questions about their individual behavior. Our interview questions fall into four broad categories which focus on situated instances of 01 use within interorganizational network contexts: 1. Situating the organization within its industry Answers to these questions should provide evidence of interorganizational relationships which can be referenced when asking about information use. 2. Situating the interviewees within the organization, the profession and the industry Answers to these questions will identify the types of mediation that intermediaries perform in the organization. 3. Situating 01 resource use and alternative information resource use at the organization Answers to these questions will help us understand how the organization balances cost and usability requirements, and how those strategies may constrain or enable interorganizational 01 resource use. information use and information 4. Situating networking at the organization Our final line of inquiry will integrate the first three lines by providing instances of situated 01 resource use which involve the mediation of interorganizational relationships. Answers to these questions will provide us with situated instances of interorganizational relationships which have been mediated through the use of 01 resources. Data Analysis We expect our focus on mediation and intermediaries to provide evidence of the relationships relevant to open rational systems theories of competitive interactions in organizational populations. We will be looking for patterns of “value added” to online information. We may also be able to determine how partnering relationships are supported by online information. The mediation focus will also allow us to gauge the descriptive contribution of institutional theories. These theories will guide us to look for existing professional relationships which enable 01 resource usage, to look for intermediary professionalization or perhaps to find patterns of disintermediation. While our analysis may offer support for these well-established theories, we may find 87 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 disconfirming evidence. It is also likely that we will find evidence of changing roles and boundaries of interaction that are not well-explained, such as one pilot study instance that we discuss in the next section. At those junctures, we will refocus our analysis with postmodem perspectives to expand it beyond a “compare and contrast” approach [34]. In order to understand and describe the phenomena of mediation of interorganizational 01 resource relationships, we will conduct our case study as an interpretive analysis guided by the theoretical explanations identified earlier. We are simultaneously gathering and analyzing data from a number of sources as we develop our description and theoretical analysis. The pilot study provided an opportunity to refine our inquiry by using theoretical sampling techniques and to further develop our research methods [35, 361. As we undertake our systematic study, we will introduce supportive data gathering and analysis techniques which will guide our integration of a variety of research data types [33, 37, 38, 391. We will also begin to examine the use of print-based information resources and interpersonal relationships in information-seeking activities. Our analytic processes will include data reduction through site summaries, the formation of inductive interpretations on the data, and provisional examination of the descriptive contribution of existing theory. By examining the use of 01 resources in professional networks where interorganizational relationships are mediated, we can relate our work to information science studies of 01 resource use and information systems studies of networks, partnerings and other interorganizational relationships within government, manufacturing firms, the legal profession and the biotechnology industry. In this way, our study will bridge the sociology of organizations and information science. And we expect to identify generators of 01 resource demand. informants interviewed with us at each location, for a total of twenty one (21) interviews. In the pilot, we found that professionals in law firms and biotech companies used 01 resources regularly. Members of biotech firms cited instances where they would search 01 databases looking for groups that had performed clinical trials of related drugs, hoping to find a reputable group to conduct clinical trials on drugs they were developing and putting forward for FDA approval. They described why their firms commonly preferred to outsource the clinical trials of their pharmaceutical and biotech products. “For instance, in addition to research, there’s development which is scale up of these products, and there’s a clinical group that worries about proving safety and efficacy...” (GM9501 12.TRN:5) “In developing drugs, you always have to go into the clinic and test them - so clinical trials are very expensive. That’s where we would hand it off to somebody else...” (JJ941012.TRN:14) In this example, we see that an interorganizational relationship is sought as a means of achieving market competitiveness, and that scientists access 01 resources during the evaluation phase of that potential partnership with a clinical trials group. Law firms cited examples of 01 database searches they had performed to identify and locate expert witnesses who had not made a career out of selling their testimony, as exemplified in our first introductory quotation. Here we see, again, that professionals consult 01 resources during the evaluation phase that a law firm goes through when trying to establish a relationship with someone who can contribute to the success of a case. Our example of the company who retained an important distributor relationship by supplying key information from 01 resources in a time critical manner also confirms the relevance of our interorganizational relationship focus. Our focus on professional mediators and mediation processes leads us to analyze a more extreme form of this activity, the competitive intelligence gathering function, more carefully. Some of the companies we have contacted gather competitive intelligence on potential partners, clients or suppliers. This activity is ostensibly preliminary to interorganizational contact, but in many cases, as in this example, no contact occurs. “...Here more than any place I think I’ve ever worked, you really have to dig for scraps of information. Because...you need a D&B, but you can’t ask D&B to go run the search because they’re going to notify the company somebody’s looking. So where else can I find it? And I’ve never had to worry about things like that before.” Pilot Study Results The pilot study has served to focus the scope and refine the objectives of this research project. These initial findings, which we highlight here, describe key features of 01 resource use and 01 mediated interorganizational relationships, and they confirm the relevance of the theoretical explanations that guide our study. We conducted the pilot study between September, 1994 and March, 1995. We interviewed at several sites in Orange County and the Bay Area: KRI, four (4) computer/software companies, three (3) biotech companies, and four (4) law offices. Between one and six 88 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 “Sometimes if you go to D&B and you want to look up a company, and the company’s not there, Dun and Bradstreet will contact them and try and get the information for you without identifying who you are...But it still notifies them to the fact that somebody at them.” is looking (SS950203.TRN: 20) Where is the relationship in this example? And where is the mediation component? One of the critical features of competitive intelligence is that the organization on whom the research is done may never know that the researching organization was interested in them in any way. In fact, this is a key attractor of using 01 resources for this purpose; one organization does not have to ask the other for information about itself, nor does it have to go through services like Dun and Bradstreet which report all such requests to the party inquired upon. The examples of competitive intelligence research which surfaced in our pilot study have led us to suggest that the 01 resource itself may be the sole or primary mediator in some interorganizational relationships. And they suggest that we should look more closely at single-source instances of information resource use to see if informants cite these as the only decision-making criteria they used. We have seen that as professionals profile a potential partner by gathering online information, they provide a basis for the strategic decisions that they or others in their organizations will make about whether or not to initiate interorganizational relationship negotiations with that potential partner. They may substantiate or enhance this profile by gathering additional information by contacting other trusted professionals who are part of their network or who work for other organizational partners. In this way, the professional networks, and other social provide relationships that can be mobilized, can information that supplements 01 resource research during relationship formation or interorganizational maintenance. These examples provide rich descriptions of 01 resource use during interorganizational relationship mediation But they also focus our attention on intermediaries and mediation processes. Some of our pilot study informants believe that the roles of intermediaries, especially information specialists, are changing. As organizations downsize, the domain of these intermediaries and their end-users is becoming less well-defined--usually at the expense of the information specialists and specialist. Several information information center managers commented on recent cutbacks in personnel at corporate information centers or law libraries: and they expressed alarm that organization decision-makers did not show awareness or concern for the negative impacts on efficient 01 resource use that they thought would occur. Librarians and information specialists are intermediaries who have well-established professional networks, and they provide important opportunities for private organizations and public university libraries to share information resources. But, this example suggests that some firms may choose to eliminate their roles, or merge them into other organizational functions. In law firms, the librarian retains a relatively secure position in an established intermediary hierarchy along with paralegals and associate attorneys. However, we found indications of role boundary changes even within law firm hierarchies. One intellectual property law firm, for example, now employs molecular biologist Ph.D.‘s on a full-time basis: “There’s the engineers mixed in--its kind of the engineers-slash-scientists because they have to understand the technology that they’re writing patents about. So, we have numerous biotech types....a few doctors of physics people and molecular genetic types.” (CP941209.TRN: 5-6) Here, the educational background of associate attorneys and firm partners, who majored in biology in college, can no longer provide the firm with enough expertise to perform its intermediary functions for its So, they have expanded their high-biotech clients. hierarchy to include a new kind of intermediary--the scientist consultant, possibly displacing or changing the roles of others. What does this have to do with the demand for 01 resources? As noted in our clinical trials example above, scientists are professionals who also use 01 resources when evaluating the work of other professionals in their field. As they help their law firm evaluate the claims of its clients, they may also use 01 resources as part of that evaluation. The evidence provided by our pilot study validates our focus on interorganizational relationships as possible generators of 01 resource demand. It also draws attention to intermediary networks, mediation activities, and professional norms for gathering and evaluating information. We will refocus the interviews of our systematic study to examine these phenomena more closely. Research Applications We have designed this study to build upon a large and growing body of research that is guided by closed system models which do not have an interorganizational focus. We have analyzed the explanations of closed system models with our colleagues [40, 411 and have found through related research [B, 421 that open system models provide more relevant theoretical guidance to Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29)
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Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 organizational studies of IT use. Our study will expand 01 resource research beyond the narrow domain of the searcher and the information corpus by examining the influences of the larger social organizational environment. Online information services are part of the world of electronic publishing, digital libraries, electronic commerce and networked communications -- the technologies that are developing and redefining what it means to live and work in an Information Age. Our research examples show that this study can provide rich description and useful insights about the ways in which 01 resource use mediates interorganizational relationships. This will interest information theorists, information scientists, information systems researchers, information service providers, consumers, and policy makers. Although we are studying a very small part of the IT spectrum, our interorganizational focus will extend our analysis beyond the domain of biotech companies and law firms, into competitive market environments. And our characterizations of professional mediation and intermediary roles will direct our focus toward phenomena which also concern public information agencies and educational institutions. As we complete the systematic phase of this study, we expect to develop a robust analysis of 01 resource demand incentives. In so doing, we will have made a contribution to the social theory of IT use by bridging the research domains of information science and the sociology of organizations. Online Meeting Proceedings - 1994, Learned Information, Inc., Medford, NJ. Culnan, M. 1983. Chauffeured Versus End User Access to Commercial Databases: The Effects of Task and Individual Differences, M1S Quarterly, 1983, 7, 55-67. Lamb, Roberta, 1994. “Information Technology Support for Technology Transfer: A Usability Field Study”, Technical Report 94-38, University of California, Irvine, 1994. Libmann, Francois, 1990. “Study of technology transfer databases”, Online Information 90, London, England. Nicholas, David and Erbach, Gertrud, 19. Online Information Sources for Business and Current 4. 5. 6. 7. Affairs: an evaluation of Textline, NEXIS, Profile and DIALOG, Manse11 Publishing Limited, New York, NY. 8. Kling, Rob and Jewett, Tom 1994. “The Social Design of Worklife With Computers and Networks: A Natural Systems Perspective”, Advances in Computers, Vol. 39, Marshall C. Yovits (ed), San Diego: Academic Press. 9. Scott, W. Richard, 1987. Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, Second Edition, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 10. Grudin, Jonathan, 1990. “Groupware and Cooperative Work: Problems and Prospects”, in The Art of Human Computer Interface Design, Addison- Wesley. 11. Ackerman, Mark S., 1994. “Definitional and Contextual Issues in Organizational and Group Memories”, Hawaii International Conference of System Sciences (HICSS ‘94). 12. O’Day, Vicki L. and Jeffries, Robin, 1993. “Information Artisans: Patterns of Result Sharing By Information Searchers”, Proc. ACM Conference on Acknowledgments We wish to thank Rob Kling, John King and Mark Ackerman for their helpful suggestions on focusing this study. We are conducting this research with Rob Kling and the Interorganizational Relationships and Information Services (IRIS) Project. For more information, please contact us: rlamb@ics.uci.edu and kling@ics.uci.edu. See also: http://www.ics.uci.edu/-rlamb. Organizational Computing Systems (COOCS ‘93), New York, ACM Press. 13. Orlikowski, Wanda J., 1993. “Learning from Notes: Organizational Issues ’ Groupware Implementation”, Information kiety 9(3) (Jul- Sep):237-250. 14. Porter, Michael E., 1980. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, The Free Press, New York, NY. 15. Porter, Michael E., 1985. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, The Free Press, New York, NY. 16. Hannan, Michael T. and Freeman, John H., 19. Organizational Ecology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. References 1. Williams, Martha E., 1985. “Usage of revenue data for the online database industry”, Online Review, Vol. 9, No. 3. 2. Williams, Martha E., 19. “Highlights of the Online Database Industry: Have Ten Years Gone By?“, Proceedings of the 10th National Online Meeting, Learned Information, Inc., Medford, NJ. 3. Williams, Martha E., 1994. “Highlights of the Online/CD-ROM Database Industry: Implications of the Internet for Database Producers”, 15th National 90 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
Proceedings of the 29th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 1996 17. Powell, Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul J., eds. 1991. 29. Larson, Ray R., 19. “Managing Information The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Overload In Online Catalog Subject Searching”, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Proceedings of the ASIS Annual Meeting, V26:129- 18. DiMaggio, Paul J., 1991. “Constructing an 135. Organizational Field as a Professional Project: U.S. 30. Shanteau, James, 1992. “How much information Art Museums, 1920-1940”, in Powell, Walter W. and does an expert use? Is it relevant?“, Acta DiMaggio, Paul J. (eds), The New Institutionalism in Psychologica, 81(1992) 75-86. Organizational Analysis, The University of Chicago 31. O’Reilly, Charles A. III, 1982. “Variations in Press, Chicago, IL. Decision Makers’ Use of Information Sources: The 19. Granovetter, M.S. 1973. “The strength of weak ties”, Impact of Quality and Accessibility of Information”, American Journal of Sociology, 78, 6 (1973), 1360- Academy ofManagement Journal, Vol. 25, No. 4. 1380. 32. Lee, Allen S., 1991. “Integrating Positivist and 20. Krackhardt, D., 1992. “The Strength of Strong Ties: Interpretivist Approaches to Organizational The Importance of Philos in Organizations”, in Research,” Organization Science Vol 2, No 4, 342- Nohria, N. and Eccles, R.G (eds) Networks and 365. Organizations: Structure, Form and Action., Boston: 33. Yin, Robert K., 19. Case Study Research: Design Harvard Business School Press, 216-239. and Methods, Revised Edition, Sage Publications, 21. Clegg, Stewart R., 1990. Modern Organizations: Newbury Park, CA. Organization Studies in the Postmodern World, Sage 34. Rosenau, Pauline Marie, 1992. Post-Modernism and Publications, London. the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions, 22. Rouleau, Linda and Clegg, Stewart R., 1992. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. “Postmodemism and postmodernity in organization 35. Strauss, Anselm L. and Corbin, J., 1990. Basics of analysis”, Journal of Organizational Change Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures Management, v5, nl (1992):8-25. and Techniques, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, 23. Barley, Stephen R., Freeman, John and Hybels, Ralph CA. C., 1992. “Strategic Alliances in Commercial 36. Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L., 1967. The Discovery Biotechnology”, in Nohria, N. and Eccles, R.G (eds) of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form and Research, Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne, NY. Action., Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 311- 37. Lofland, John and Lofland, Lyn H., 1995. Analyzing 347. Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation 24. Heinz, John P. and Laumann, Edward O., 1994. and Analysis, Third Edition, Wadsworth Publishing Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar, Co., Belmont, CA. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL. 38. Marshall, Catherine and Rossman, Gretchen B., 25. Powell, Walter W. and Brantley, Peter, 1992. 19. Designing Qualitative Research, Sage “Competitive Cooperation in Biotechnology: Publications, Newbury Park, CA. Learning Through Networks?“, in Nohria, N. and 39. Miles, M.B. and Huberman, A.M., 1994. Qualitative Eccles, R.G (eds) Networks and Organizations: Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook, Second Structure, Form and Action., Boston: Harvard Edition, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Business School Press, 366-394. 40. Kling, Rob and Lamb, Roberta, (in press). 26. Pfaffenberger, Bryan, 1990. Democratizing “Analyzing Visions of Electronic Publishing and Information: Online Databases and the Rise of End- Digital Libraries”, in Scholarly Publishing: The User Searching, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, MA. Electronic Frontier, Gregory B. Newby and Robin M. 27. Nicholas, David, Erbach, Gertrud, Pang, Yin Wah, Peek (Eds.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. and Paalman, Koren, 1988. End-Users of Online 41. Kling, Rob, (to appear). “Boutique and Mass Media Information Systems: An Analysis, Manse11 Markets, Intermediation, and the Costs of On-Line Publishing Limited, New York, NY. Services”, The Communication Review. 28. Oddy, Robert N., Liddy, Elizabeth Duress, 42. Kling, Rob and Covi, Lisa, (in press). “Electronic Balakrishnan, Bhaskaran, Bishop, Ann, Elewononi, Journals and Legitimate Media in the Systems of Joseph and Martin, Eileen, 1992. “Towards the Use Scholarly Communication”, The Information Society, of Situational Information in Information Retrieval”, ll(4). Journal of Documentation, Vol. 48, No. 2. 91 Proceedings of the 1996 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-29) 1060-3425/96 $10.00 © 1996 IEEE
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