• Posted Jan. 10, 2018

Study: Interorganizational dependence, information transparency in interorganizational information systems, and supply chain performance

Problem:

Information technology enables supply-chain partners to share information, thereby fostering supply-chain performance. However, only a few organizations fully exploit their supply-chain partners’ information resources, leading to a large gap between the potential and practice of inter-organizational information systems. This study asks why only a few organizations benefit from their partners’ information.

How it was studied:

The authors interviewed 111 suppliers to determine their dependence, information transparency, relationship quality, relationship-specific performance, inter-organizational trust, inter-organizational information systems integration, and joint governance structure. They used partial least squares (PLS) to analyze the data.

Take away:

In examining the relationships among asymmetry in the degree to which partners depend on each other, information transparency, and supply-chain performance, this study provides some important suggestions:

• Supply-chain partners would benefit from information-sharing by forming interdependent relationships using inter-organizational information systems.
• Information-sharing behavior depends on the level of interdependence between the supply-chain partners involved.
• Increasing interdependence between supply-chain partners increases information transparency.
• Information transparency positively influences relationship quality, but asymmetric information transparency negatively influences joint profit.