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This paper aims to investigate the alignment between the information‐processing needs and capabilities during interorganizational relationships through the lenses of both the product and the business relationships life cycle concepts, and the types of information exchanged.

This paper follows up on a previous empirical study conducted in the automotive sector, investigating the electronic collaboration within the supply chain of a large European Automotive Supplier (EAS). Out of the 61 respondents from this previous study, four illustrative cases are selected to further investigate their information alignment, where each case involves one specific relationship between EAS and its business partners based on the supply chain collaboration classification provided by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).

The conclusion is that the phenomenon is bimodal and requires that the different information‐processing needs and capabilities associated with each stage of both the product and the business relationships life cycles should be considered.

The small number of illustrative cases and the specificity of the chosen sector limit the generalizability of the results. Without considering the various types of information‐processing needs and capabilities as well as the stage of both product and business relationships life cycles, a biased conclusion could lead to inappropriate information and communication technology investments and business decisions.

The richness of the cases and the genuine integration of the life cycle concepts and the type of information with the notion of alignment help to identify some key aspects of interorganizational relationships.

Organizations invest in novel digital innovations to improve their business processes. These innovations, including Industry 4.0 technologies, enable full organizational integration with business process management (BPM), thereby requiring interorganizational relationship (IOR) capabilities. Many organizations lack knowledge about areas of interorganizational (IO) capability for integrating digital innovations into their value chains. They therefore have difficulty understanding that, as a socio-technical concept, digitalization surpasses the intraorganizational level and requires tools to develop mandatory IOR capabilities. The authors’ systematic literature review (SLR) explores these capabilities within the discipline of BPM. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This SLR follows the standard methodology for structuring a broad research field. The authors assessed capabilities relevant to manufacturing organizations from 58 academic articles published between 2011 and 2021.

Building on existing firm-centric capability frameworks, the authors developed individual capabilities into a novel framework of digital interorganizational value chain (DIOVC). The authors’ conceptual model provides a basis for researchers and practitioners to consider capabilities and the theoretical spectrum of IO value chains.

Future studies should validate these DIOVC capabilities as input for an updated model of BPM maturity aimed at improving business process performance through digital innovations.

This study provides organizations with IOR knowledge, supports decision makers in governing digital innovations and develops IO capabilities to improve their value chain performance.

The authors’ DIOVC capability framework is robust, with constructs and dimensions grounded in the literature, demonstrating theoretical and practical relevance.

Interorganizational business process standards (IBPS) are IT-enabled process specifications that standardize, streamline, and improve business processes related to interorganizational relationships. There has been much interest in IBPS as organizations from different industries implement these process standards that lead to successful organizational outcomes by integrating and standardizing intra- and inter-organizational business processes. These process standards enable data analytics capabilities by facilitating new sources of interorganizational process data. The purpose of this paper is to unearth employees’ reactions to a new type of supply chain process innovations that involved an implementation of new IBPS, a supply chain management (SCM) system, and associated analytics capabilities.

The authors gathered and analyzed qualitative data for a year from the employees of a healthcare supplier, a high-tech manufacturing organization, during the implementation of a SCM system and RosettaNet-based IBPS.

In what the authors termed the initiation stage, there was quite a bit of confusion and unrest among employees regarding the relevance of the new process standards and associated analytics capabilities. With the passage of time, in the institutionalization stage, although the situation improved slightly, employees found workarounds that allowed them to appropriate just part of specific processes and the analytics capabilities. Finally, once routinized, employees felt comfortable in the situation but still did not appropriate the new supply chain processes faithfully. Overall, employees’ reactions toward the SCM system and associated analytics capabilities were different from their reactions toward the new business processes.

The paper contributes to the literature by offering novel insights on how employees react to and appropriate process innovations that change their work processes.

This paper aims to present a new approach for developing a framework based on a model driven architecture (MDA) for the modelling of technology‐independent collaborative processes.

The paper suggests a new collaborative process modelling approach based on an MDA and a metamodelling technique. The research method, based on the design science approach, was started by identifying the characteristics of the collaborative processes, which distinguish them from the classical intraorganizational ones. Then, the generic collaborative business process (CBP) modelling framework is developed based on MDA approach and definition of a set of transformation rules through three layers: business, process, and technical. After that, the core component of the framework was the proposition of a generic CBP metamodel at PIM/MDA level. The specific collaboration participant's business processes (expressed as BPMN model) are generated from the generic CBP model represented as an UML2 Profile activity diagram, which is compliant to CBP metamodel. Finally, as proof‐of‐concept, the architecture of an Eclipse‐based open development platform is developed implementing an e‐Procurement collaborative process.

The proposed framework for CBP modelling and the generic CBP metamodel contribute towards a more efficient methodology and have consequences for BPM‐related collaboration, facilitating the B2B processes modelling and implementation. In order to demonstrate and evaluate the practical applicability of the framework, the architecture of an Eclipse‐based open development platform is developed implementing a collaborative business application on the basis of an e‐Procurement use case.

There is a need to focus future research efforts on the improvement of the semi‐automatic transformation phase from public to private processes which needs human intervention by adding a suitable interfaces at both sides of the B2B interaction. In addition, the problem of semantic heterogeneities regarding the partner's business process elements (business documents, activity/task names) should be tackled by developing an approach that uses ontology.

Business processes developers find a B2B technology‐independent solution for implementing and using interorganizational information systems.

The paper provides a framework that enables the CBP modelling and integrates a generic CBP metamodel. Currently, to the best of the authors' knowledge, such a generic metamodel and his instantiation have not so far been developed.

To explore the emergent characteristics of IT portfolios in business-to-business (B2B) firms. The goal is to develop a model that clarifies what interaction capabilities B2B firms develop and to what form of IT this corresponds to.

We apply an a priori conceptual framework that is based on the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group's theoretical focus on business relationships. The framework depicts the business relationship as dealing with uncertainty and equivocality as well as building and upholding reliance and trust. We utilize a case study approach involving a focal firm and ten of its customers and suppliers. Building on 60 interviews, field observations and archival data, we analyze interviewee responses and the complementary data to evaluate the role of IT in supporting or automated various aspects of organizational relationships.

Results show how “high tech” and “high touch” relate to different interaction capabilities, which firms develop based on the characteristics of their business relationships. Although IT is associated with “high tech” and “high touch” interaction capabilities, some forms of IT are deployed to support the former, while other forms support the later. Both forms of technology-enabled interaction capabilities require investment, and firms must balance investment costs against the value created by improved interaction capabilities.

Our findings emphasize the interorganizational perspective (dyadic or network) rather than a solely organizational perspective for understanding IT portfolio development. This perspective is presented through an emergent tech–touch interaction capability model that shows how B2B firms can align their IT portfolio based on the specific characteristics of their business relationships.

Research has shown that companies focus their internal processes when they adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, the ERP systems need to expand their functionality to include customers and suppliers (with e-commerce functionality) to reach their full potential. The purpose of this paper is to consider business relationships as a resource but also a limitation when companies strive to get an extended ERP system.

The paper presents an illustrative case study of an industrial company's process of developing an extended ERP and how the company's portfolio of business relationships has affected the solution. The analysis is supported by the markets-as-networks theory.

The process of developing an extended ERP system needs to incorporate the company's business partners (customers and suppliers). It is a simultaneously bottom-up and top-down process given that the operative frontline staff hold the knowledge about the company's business relationships while the corporate management has the means of extending the ERP system functionality and align it with the focal company's strategy.

Companies need to consider the fact that the technological and financial status of their customers and suppliers differ. Thus, an effective and flexible extended ERP system needs to include both a high-end and low-end solution as well as understand that a full interorganizational integration might not be realistic.

The paper puts forth business relationship portfolios as an important factor to consider when extending the ERP system functionality in the supply chain and toward customers.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding on the essential managerial and technical decisions in the design of IOIS for supply chain integration (SCI). Toward this end, the authors elaborate on IOIS constructs in the SCI context, and propose a framework on the design of IOIS for SCI based on the current literature.

The paper draws from prior literature on interorganizational information systems (IOISs) and supply chain management (SCM), and builds a conceptual framework that is illustrated by empirical examples from three case studies of a ten-year research program that focussed on e-business in SCM.

Based on prior literature from several domains, the authors propose a framework, which combines the managerial viewpoints and the technical viewpoints for designing IOIS for SCI. The authors argue that these decisions form the basis for constructing three main elements of the IOIS for SCI design theory, namely, purpose and scope, design principles, and technical framework. Furthermore, the authors suggest that the real thread binding the decisions on all levels – purpose and scope; design principles; technical framework – is the flexible differentiation over use contexts, primarily over partners and focal interorganizational processes.

The key limitation of this work is the propositional nature of the advanced framework. However, the framework is strongly grounded in prior literature and is illustrated by examples from three empirical studies.

The proposed framework provides a systematic tool for both the design and evaluation of the practical implementation of IOISs in SCI context. Furthermore, the results point explicitly to the implications of the benefits received from unilateral and bilateral modes of IOIS design.

The synthesized framework and the observation of the requisite differentiation over use context complement prior work from multiple domains by discussing both managerial and technical questions of IOIS deployment within a single conceptualization.

Many companies have adopted electronic data interchange (EDI), often with results inconsistent with the expectations of the company. In these instances, it is often the mismatch between expectations and the company’s activities undertaken to achieve the desired performance gain that fuels their dissatisfaction with EDI. This same mismatch often causes academic research into EDI and supply chain management to lose focus. This article presents a framework of EDI benefits in a supply chain management context that can be used to match a company’s EDI efforts with its desired outcomes from EDI use. The framework states that two critical factors to understanding EDI’s impact on supply chain management are the span of management control of the business process in question and whether EDI directly or indirectly influences that same business process. The proposed framework is then used to develop a research agenda for EDI and supply chain management. We suggest possible directions for research methods, measure development and hypothesis generation that can be used in future research studies.

Drawing on the operations and information systems literature as well as concepts tied to buyer‐seller relationships, the objective of this exploratory research is to measure the influence of joint collaboration planning actions on the strength of relationships, interorganizational information systems (IOISs) use and firm flexibility. The path model proposed in this study also posits that joint collaboration planning actions and the strength of relationships positively affect IOISs use, which in turn positively affects firm flexibility.

Empirical evidence is gathered through an electronic survey conducted with 53 suppliers in a single supply network in the telecommunications equipment industry.

The present study demonstrates that joint collaboration planning actions positively and significantly impact the strength of relationships. The results also show that IOISs use mediates the impact of joint collaboration planning actions and of the strength of relationships on firm flexibility.

This study contributes to managers' understanding of the critical role played by joint collaboration planning actions between partners and IOISs in a demand‐driven supply chain.

This research is amongst the few that have examined the preparation or other activities that precede the actual collaboration between partners.

This study aims to investigate the effects of open innovation (OI) and big data analytics (BDA) on reflective knowledge exchange (RKE) within the context of complex collaborative networks. Specifically, it considers the relationships between sourcing knowledge from an external environment, transferring knowledge to an external environment and adopting solutions that are useful to appropriate returns from innovation.

This study analyzes the connection between the number of patent applications and the amount of OI, as well as the association between the number of patent applications and the use of BDA. Data from firms in the 27 European Union countries were retrieved from the Eurostat database for the period 2014–2019 and were investigated using an ordinary least squares regression analysis.

Because of its twofold lens based on both knowledge management and OI, this study sheds light on OI collaboration modes and highlights the crucial role they could play in innovation. In particular, the results suggest that OI collaboration modes have a strong effect on innovation performance, stimulating the search for RKE.

This study furthers a deeper understanding of RKE, which is shown to be an important mechanism that incentivizes firms to increase their efforts in the innovation process. Further, RKE supports firms in taking full advantage of the innovative knowledge they generate within their inter-organizational network.