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The implications of disintermediation for librarians and information specialists (intermediaries) can be experienced as either a threat of a challenge, depending on how the issue is viewed. The different ways in which information specialists can react to disintermediation are discussed. Although most of these are viable, none addresses all implications of disintermediation. A holistic approach to disintermediation is therefore proposed, in which the situation of the intermediary is viewed within the wider society. The following aspects should be analysed with regard to their effect on disintermediation: changes in the society at large, the availability of information sources, the process of information searching, the specific organisations in which intermediaries operate, and the availability of information services. The specific end‐users and the information specialists involved should also be analysed. With this approach it will be found that the effects of disintermediation will vary according to the particular situations. To prepare information specialists for the effects of disintermediation, their training should also be adapted accordingly.

THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DISINTERMEDIATION Disintermediation is a relatively new term on the financial scene in America. The term was first coined in mid‐1966 and has since, to the dismay of many, become part of the daily vocabulary of bankers and economists. Originally, it sprang up to describe the outflow of funds from deposits at financial intermediaries (commercial banks, savings and loan associations and mutual savings banks) to investments yielding a higher return. Since that time, disintermediation, has taken on several additional forms such as fractional disintermediation, which addresses differences between the maximum interest rate that can be paid on a time deposit with a specified maturity at a financial intermediary and the interest rates prevailing on the similar instruments in the open market. Another new form of savings outflow is passbook disintermediation which will be discussed later. No matter which form of disintermediation is addressed, the same difficulty exists for the depository institutions — how to remain competitive when interest rates rise above the maximum ceiling rates allowed by law.

This study aims to observe and discuss an emerging disintermediation in transportation, finance and health care, and explain how these three key areas depend on intermediary institutions that are the fruit of modern corporate governance conditions that find their roots in classical sociological theory.

The authors review and incorporate a diversity of research literature to explain the likelihood for the development and continuation of disintermediation.

The authors map two sociological perspectives (Emile Durkheim’s theory of interdependence and Herbert Spencer’s theory of contracts) to two modern corporate governance theories (resource dependence theory and agency theory). The authors then discuss the challenging social situation resulting from modern corporate governance and show how these conditions create the potential for a continuum of disintermediation across the specific and crucial economic sectors of transportation, finance and health care.

The implications of this theoretical integration can help organizational leaders navigate complex social and strategic issues and prepare for the consequences that may result from the emerging disintermediation.

Supply chain management represents a critical competency in today’s global business environment and has been the focus of considerable, but mixed, information systems research. The research described in this paper builds on work in multi‐agent systems to argue that intelligent agents offer excellent potential and capability for supply chain management, and contributes to discussion and theory pertaining to electronic markets and supply chain disintermediation. Argues that the knowledge associated with intermediation work represents a key mediating variable between disintermediating technology and supply chain efficacy and discusses how intelligent agent technology can be employed to both intermediate and disintermediate the supply chain, attaining the cost and cycle‐time benefits of disintermediation without the attendant loss of human knowledge and expertise. The paper outlines a number of implications for theory and practice in information systems, and it formalizes some important research questions through a contingency framework to help stimulate and guide future work along these lines.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Pakistani banks manage their portfolios (lending vs investment) when the economic indicators are not supportive. This study investigates three aspects of the banking system in Pakistan – prevalence of disintermediation, post-crisis profitability orientation and depositor protection by financial system in unfavorable conditions.

This study is limited to identifying the key economic and financial drivers behind disintermediation and its subsequent impact on banks’ profitability and depositors’ protection. GLS panel regressions and Engle–Granger causality test as specified by the error correction model have been used to test the major hypothesis of this study.

This study shows that small banks have been shifting major part of their portfolios toward risk-free investments to be able to maintain their profitability more efficiently and effectively, like large banks. The study also observes that significant pairing causality exists between gross credit loans and investments confirming disintermediation hypothesis for all types of banks except Islamic or Sharia compliant banks, whereas for significant pairing causality, the results are mixed for remaining variables among gross credit loans as a proportion of assets and economic variables that include GDP growth, unemployment, KSE-100 and SBP policy rate. It is also confirmed by the results that disintermediation improves banks profitability and depositor protection, thus providing a good rationale and justification to banks for opting it.

The study focuses on the impact of structural changes in portfolios only of commercial banks’ revenue-generating assets not including other financial institutions as a part of banking system. Furthermore, data are extracted from balance sheets and is the sole property of corresponding author.

During the 1990s the “information age” spawned a new breed of enterprises devising business models unheard of previously. One aspect of this changing business environment has been the trend in disintermediation observed in many industries. Where many recent papers see disintermediation as a phenomenon related to online transactions, this paper defines it more broadly as the removal or a weakening of an intermediary within a supply chain. This paper attempts to explain why disintermediation of distributors/import agents often occurs at the growth phase of a product's lifecycle, highlighting possible opportunities and outcomes for distributors threatened by disintermediation. The paper uses a downturn in a company's fortune to illustrate the case and to provide a potentially generic analytical tool for small distributors that will almost inevitably face a conflict of interests with their suppliers, which leads to disintermediation pressure.

The purpose of this paper is to reexamine several issues about disintermediation from the perspectives of tourism product/service suppliers (hotels) and traditional intermediaries (travel agencies), considering the move of the current distribution landscape toward disintermediation. Internet and mobile technologies offer various tools for consumers to search and purchase products/services from suppliers directly. Consequently, the necessity and role of traditional intermediaries in the industry become questionable.

In all, six focus group interviews were conducted to collect primary data from ten managers of three traditional travel agencies and 11 managers from three business hotels in Hong Kong, which is a major travel destination in Asia with many world-class hotels and tourism facilities.

Despite their different business backgrounds, the interviewees agreed on the increasing importance of Internet technology in the distribution of tourism products. The interviewees also posited that traditional travel agencies are still needed to serve certain customer groups, albeit their role may have little importance.

Practitioners should adapt to technologically induced changes to remain competitive in the e-business era.

This paper provides several original contributions. First, this paper supplements the extant literature by revealing how modern practitioners perceive disintermediation in the tourism and hospitality industry. Second, this paper is the first to investigate the disintermediation issue from the perspectives of tourism product/service suppliers and intermediaries. Finally, this paper provides a reference for industry practitioners to establish adequate strategies that take advantage of Internet technology.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the current thinking on intermediation and disintermediation, extract candidate drivers for this cycle, capture the expert opinions on what is driving the cycle and determine the quantitative and qualitative conclusions related to the electronics industry supply network integration and requirements for its success.

A series of one‐on‐one expert interviews were conducted to establish the validity of the initial list of drivers and to add to this list based upon their expert knowledge. A web‐based survey followed with the purpose of validating the final dimensions list and assessing the various alternative value propositions that intermediaries should be considering. Finally, a Delphi exercise concluded this research thrust by convening experts in the electronics supply network for a one‐day review of the results and a distillation of the results into expert forecasts of directions and trends.

Any supply chain intermediary must achieve “Operational Excellence” in their chosen field of endeavor for them to remain competitive in the electronics industry. But this condition is a necessary but not sufficient predictor of business success. The intermediary service “Bundles” bring more value than individual cash flow, material flow, information flow or knowledge flow alone. And unbundling one flow from the others does not seem to provide a successful disintermediation platform.

The paper provides electronics industry firms an assessment of the fundamental conclusions that must be addressed for this industry to better withstand another industry downturn than it did in the previous recessionary period (2001‐2002).

This paper documents the first triangulated research project where knowledgeable experts within the electronics industry supply network were polled to determine the fundamental drivers for the intermediation/disintermediation cycle present in the electronics industry today.

Generation Y is a new sizable market that is fast changing as the landscape of the internet rapidly evolves. Until now, research has examined mainly the perceptions of different online buyers of accommodation in specific geographical areas, with little attention devoted to Generation Y. This study examines Generation Y travelers’ perceptions of hotel disintermediation in France. The results, based on a sample of 378 French travelers, show four underlying dimensions of perceptions. Findings also reveal that only gender and age significantly influence perceptions. The chapter closes with implications for increasing trust and attractiveness of the online accommodation offer to French Generation Y.

The Internet has encouraged rural tourism experience providers to develop a new management strategy that opts for disintermediation to access the market. In this context, incoming travel agencies (destination management companies [DMCs]), despite the local component, lose capacity to promote the rural tourism. The main question is what kind of relationship between stakeholders would enhance effective intermediation processes between them. The paper examines such constraints and limitations of existing relationships between small local rural tourism producers and DMCs.

Using the Basque Country region of northern Spain as a case study, the authors used a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology based on semi-structured in-depth interviews and an online survey. The data analysis strategy used incorporated descriptive and exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

In this research, most of the tourism disintermediation factors identified in previous literature were reinforced when tested in the rural context. The results confirm that power, value, product differentiation, digitisation and stakeholder collaboration are key elements. The value provided in the international segment by DMCs, though, was found to be irrelevant.

This article contributes to filling a gap in the literature on rural tourism destination management from a holistic view of the destination understanding the business-to-business (B2B) relationship among stakeholders in rural tourism. This paper focuses on those elements that create value for local producers to sell the products through intermediaries and provides a framework for understanding the factors involved in value creation in rural tourism intermediation, which is applicable to further empirical studies and provides interesting managerial implications.