In our sample of SMEs, organizational memories represented the exper-tise, experiences, and knowledge of the owner or managing partner of the SME, these being the individuals who decid
Trang 1weekly meetings with her employees at a local
pub to impart her discoveries and insights from
the week’s activities At SMEs, employees are
always in close contact with the owner/manager
$VDUHVXOWWKHÀRZRINQRZOHGJHJRHVXSDQG
down via hierarchical ranks; this occurs smoothly
and normally via personalized meetings between
individuals Employees working in an SME are in
close proximity to each other The result of being
in close quarters is employees are in conversation
and communication with one another on a daily
basis Granted that much of the conversation has
nothing to do with the business at-hand, and is
more social in nature, it nonetheless helps build a
friendly environment in which knowledge
shar-ing becomes easier and more effective As one
PDQDJHURIDUHVWDXUDQWUHPDUNHG³,GRQRWPLQG
if my employees engage in conversations during
work hours…it is important that they like each
other and of course like me…in this way they
will know that when I criticize their work…I am
doing it with good intentions…and not due to a
hidden agenda.”
Socialization is the dominant activity in SMEs
and it subsumes the remaining three acts—ECI.
Let us explain Due to resource constraints and
the lack of maturity, SMEs seldom have rich
or-ganizational memories In our sample of SMEs,
organizational memories represented the
exper-tise, experiences, and knowledge of the owner or
managing partner of the SME, these being the
individuals who decided to start-up the business
and who possessed domain knowledge The
own-ers/managers conducted acts of combination on
their knowledge, internally They added to their
pieces of knowledge by observing behavior in
their businesses and the environment Due to
the private nature of the organizational memory
i.e it resided in the mind of the manager/owner,
other organizational members could not use this
knowledge for acts of combination or even apply it
directly Hence, they had to rely on getting
knowl-edge from acts of socialization The owners would
hold training sessions and impart their knowledge
via an apprenticeship mode Put another way, internalization of knowledge occurred by social-ization with the owner/manager An outcome of not having dedicated organizational memories is the absence of efforts on the part of employees to externalize their knowledge into explicit artifacts Knowledge, once internalized by employees is ap-plied directly to work, and is seldom documented
in a secondary storage medium like a notebook
or information systems
To summarize, in SMEs there is lack of
ex-plicit knowledge repositories such as an Intranet
tool for sharing knowledge or large databases Instead, each manager/owner acts as the knowl-edge repository Since the repository is private, acts of combination are also conducted privately Knowledge becomes part of the organization’s fabric when it is socialized from the manager to the employees; seldom does knowledge move the other way i.e from employee to manager This
is because employees are not too concerned with knowledge management details when compared
to executing their operations on a daily basis Knowledge, once socialized, is internalized when apprenticeship based training is conducted We
can thus argue for the presence of an S E C Imodel
in SMEs in which the S dominates, rather than the
standard SECI model found in larger organizations
in which each activity has an equally important role in knowledge management
Finding 2: Common Knowledge
7KHVHFRQGSHFXOLDU¿QGLQJLVWKHLVVXHRI³FRP-mon knowledge” Com7KHVHFRQGSHFXOLDU¿QGLQJLVWKHLVVXHRI³FRP-mon knowledge, as we GH¿QHLWKHUHLVNQRZOHGJHWKDWLVNQRZQWRDOO PHPEHUVRIWKHRUJDQL]DWLRQ0XFKOLNH³FRP-PRQVHQVH´³FRPPRQNQRZOHGJH´KHOSVLQWKH conduct of work in organizations by providing
a common frame of reference Without some form of common knowledge, the essence of the WHUP³RUJDQL]DWLRQ´ZLOOEHORVW7RRUJDQL]HLV
to join together or assemble for a common goal
In most large organizations, knowledge is
Trang 2ir-regularly distributed across the various sectors
(Tushman & Nadler, 1978) As an organization
grows, areas of specialization emerge such as
¿QDQFH RU RSHUDWLRQV DQG NQRZOHGJH LQ WKHVH
domains get concentrated around the areas of
specialization Knowledge available in the areas
RIVSHFLDOL]DWLRQZLOOQRWEH³FRPPRQ´DFURVVWKH
organization The lack of common knowledge has
EHHQNQRZQWRLPSHGHWKHÀRZRINQRZOHGJH
resulting in failures to stimulate innovation and
creativity in the organization (Simonin, 1999;
Szulanski, 1997)
In SMEs, we were pleasantly surprised to see
the prominence of common knowledge in terms of
both depth and breadth Most SMEs we researched
had deep-levels of common knowledge, that is,
each employee had very similar foundation and
grounding in organizational matters For example,
LQDFDIpLQ&KLFDJRDPDQDJHUUHPDUNHG³EDVLF
training provided to my employees consists of
equipping them to run the shop…if an employee
KDVVXI¿FLHQWLQIRUPDWLRQDQGNQRZOHGJHRQKRZ
to manage the café from - opening up the door, to
running the register, making a cappuccino,
serv-LQJDVDQGZLFKPRSSLQJWKHÀRRUDQGHQWHULQJ
the receipts at close—the training is viewed as
successful…else we will re-train.” Due to
train-ing initiatives such as these, each employee is
given a deep introduction into the way the SME
conducts business It is because of this that
em-SOR\HHVFDQIUHTXHQWO\DQGRIWHQGR¿OOLQIRU
one another The deep level of knowledge along
with the breadth of common knowledge also
fa-cilitates ease of communication and sensemaking
Common knowledge forms a shared context for
interpretation and communication For example,
if a restaurant institutes a new work practice that
affects the waiters, chances are high they will be
appreciate it The reason being they have enough
knowledge about the work of the cooks, busboys,
cashiers, and bartenders, to comprehend whether
the new process will streamline the entire
res-taurant operations, resulting in them leaving for
home early, and may be with increased tips To
TXRWHDUHVWDXUDQWRZQHU³,GRQRWKDYHWRNHHS explaining myself to the cooks, busboys, valet staff, and waiters…they know that they are all in this thing together…they see the big picture and work to enhance that…we do not have allegiances towards being waiters or valet staff, rather we all work for the restaurant…”
$QRXWFRPHRIKDYLQJ³FRPPRQNQRZOHGJH´
is the speed of knowledge transfer Ishin-Denshin,
is a Japanese term, can be roughly translated to
³SUHVHQFHRIWDFLWXQGHUVWDQGLQJEHWZHHQFRP-PXQLFDWRUVWKDWVLJQL¿HVWKHVSHHGRINQRZOHGJH transfer that will occur if communicators share WKHVDPHFRQWH[W´6SHFL¿FDOO\EHIRUHRQHVSHDNV what is going to be spoken and its associated con-text is known to the other In restaurants, there are numerous hand jesters, eye movements, and even WKHVSHHGRISK\VLFDOPRYHPHQWWKDWVLJQL¿HVLQ-formation items such as clean this table, bring some water, two cups of coffee, or even the customer is livid as we buggered up the order As we are not artist, we will not attempt to sketch them out here Shorthand writing is found on food orders taken
by waiters, who then pass these to the cooks and the bartenders for food and drink preparations Even orders when given by the manager such as
³SOHDVHVHDWWKLVFXVWRPHULQ6HFWLRQDQGHQVXUH that he enjoys a pleasant experience” has a dif-IHUHQWPHDQLQJWKDQ³SOHDVHVHDWWKLVFXVWRPHULQ 6HFWLRQDQGSURYLGHKLPZLWKWKH¿QHVWRIIHU-LQJV´,QWKH¿UVWFDVHWKHPDQDJHULVDVNLQJIRU the customer to receive the standard treatment, while in the latter, the manager is ensuring that the waiter knows this customer is valuable, is a frequenter of the establishment, and do not bugger
up his meal or experience at the restaurant These expressions are well understood by the members
of the organization, and help in executing tasks LQHIIHFWLYHDQGHI¿FLHQWPDQQHUV-XVWLPDJLQH what would happen if the restaurant owner could not use language in a subtle manner to convey his intentions?, what would transpire if the manager KDGWRVD\HYHU\WLPH²³VWDQGDUGWUHDWPHQW´YV
³SUHPLHUWUHDWPHQW´IRUDFXVWRPHUFKDQFHVDUH high the business would close down soon
Trang 3In summary, common knowledge possessed
by members of the SMEs is deep and broad This
common knowledge helps in the organization
of work by easing issues of knowledge transfer,
sensemaking, and application
Finding 3: Knowledge Loss:
A Problem? Or Is it?
When an employee leaves the organization he/she
takes knowledge out the door In the present time
RI¿HUFHFRPSHWLWLRQDQGKLJKHPSOR\HHPRELOLW\
dealing with issues of knowledge loss has become
a management imperative We asked SMEs how
they faired with issues of knowledge loss
Surpris-ingly, many remarked that they never considered it
DUHDOSUREOHPRULVVXH$W¿UVWJODQFHZHWKRXJKW
this can be attributed by the fact that these
busi-nesses have only been in existence for a few years
and hence did not have much knowledge to lose
Through deeper analysis, we discovered that the
answer was not that simple Some of the mature
SMEs in our sample had deliberate mechanisms
in place to prevent knowledge loss from
becom-ing a problem
As we have discussed earlier, much of the core
knowledge is held by the owner/managers of the
organization In addition, common knowledge is
found in all employees Obviously, if the owner
was to leave, knowledge loss would occur, but the
business would close down, at least in its present
form So, the real knowledge loss issues center
around employees and managers Due to the ease
of availability of common knowledge, the business
is not affected if one or more employees leave As
is found commonly in the hospitality industries,
front-line employee turnover is high—employees
come and go, and other employees take on their
work in the interlude In addition to the ease by
which existing employees can be moved to cover
positions impacted by knowledge loss, most SMEs
have streamlined the process whereby a new hire
can be indoctrinated with common knowledge
Their quick execution of the hire-and-train cycle
is salient In most café’s and restaurants we stud-ied, a new hire would be given a day’s worth of training, which would involve observations of how work was conducted, meetings with manag-ers, and standard discussions on do’s and don’ts, WKLV ZDV VXI¿FLHQW WR JHW WKH HPSOR\HH VWDUWHG with work New hires, almost always, have the basic background knowledge about work in the industry of the SME Differences across SMEs
in an industry are minimal resulting in ease of knowledge portability One dry-cleaning/laundry EXVLQHVV RZQHU H[SODLQHG ³, KLUH SHRSOH ZKR have worked in the laundry business…they will not be experts…but they nonetheless know the operational aspects of the trade…there is not much difference between my store and Kim’s [another laundry business only two streets away]…if you have worked in one…you will be successful in working in others.” Basic knowledge in operations KHOSVQHZKLUHVTXLFNO\OHDUQQHZGHWDLOVVSHFL¿F
to the organization and begin applying them on the job The knowledge space of interest to SMEs LVOLPLWHGDQGZHOOGH¿QHGFRPSDUHGWRODUJHU organizations; hence new employees do not feel overwhelmed with the amount they must learn
in order to work effectively
Instances of managers leaving an SME are rare In our sample of 25 SMEs, with an average age of 2.8 years, we found only two instances of managers quitting Managers seldom quit SMEs because they have built a tenure and rapport with the business and the owner In cases where, the owner’s family members are not the managers, the mangers are usually long-standing friends of the owners In most instances these friends probably, went to the same school or college, had similar previous places of employment in the past, lived
in same locality, or had some other form of thick social bond One organization in our sample, a PDQDJHPHQWFRQVXOWLQJ¿UPZDVIRUPHGE\WZR buddies who played Rugby at their college Besides playing Rugby, they graduated from the same Business School Upon graduation, the two went
to work for different consulting houses and lost
Trang 4their job due to downsizing in late 2000 During a
reunion of the College Rugby Team, they engaged
in a conversation leading to the creation of the
SME Due to close ties between senior members,
VHOGRPGRZH¿QGLQVWDQFHVRINQRZOHGJHORVV
due to individuals leaving the organization
In the two cases in our sample, where senior
PHPEHUVGLGTXLWWKHEXVLQHVVWKH¿UVWRQHZDV
due to a disagreement over salaries and company
direction with the owner The second case was
due to health reasons which forced a 72 year-old
FRRNWRUHWLUH,QWKH¿UVWFDVHWKHRZQHUKDQGOHG
the knowledge loss by simply promoting the next
most competent person to the title of manager
When we asked if there was serious issues that
stemmed from departure of the manager, the
RZQHUUHSOLHG³QR«QRWUHDOO\«-DVRQ«ZDVDEOH
to take on the work left behind by
Stuart…more-over Jason and Stuart are friends…so if things
were missing or needed…Stuart is only a phone
call away…Stuart does not hate us…he just found
a position where he could push his program and
ideas.” The ability to quickly promote someone
WR¿OODYDFDWHGSRVLWLRQLVDQLPSRUWDQWVNLOOIRU
SMEs SMEs cannot afford to lose customers by
having gaps or breaks in knowledge application
and the conduct of work All SMEs we spoke to
have high redundancy of requisite knowledge,
there is no knowledge nugget, skill, or expertise
that is rare and housed in the mind of only one
employee
In the second case, where the chef quit for
health reasons, the second in-command of the
kitchen was made head chef The
second-in-com-PDQGJRWKLV¿UVWFRRNLQJMREIURPWKHKHDGFKHI
his boss! So over the past 24 years, dating back
to several previous employment instances, of
working with him, he had acquired knowledge of
the chef’s way of cooking and mastered his style
of managing the kitchen Hence, knowledge loss
was again not a serious issue here One thing we
must stress here is the fact that all SMEs, which
we spoke with, promote from within They almost
never hire an outsider for senior positions; all hires
are made at the front-lines Over time, experi-ences, and efforts one is promoted to the higher ranks This is one of the critical reasons why, knowledge loss is not an issue, as there are many
in the organization that have a similar repertoire
of experiences and knowledge to draw on
To summarize, SMEs by their nature and due
to deliberate mechanisms are skilled at avoiding pitfalls of knowledge loss The close social ties between members of the SME act as a deterrence against employees leaving the business In cases where employees do leave the business, there are plenty of available knowledge resources that can EHPRELOL]HGWRTXLFNO\¿OOWKHYRLG
Finding 4: Exploitation of External Sources of Knowledge
SMEs have a knack for exploiting foreign sources
of knowledge (Robinson, 1982) Since they are resource constrained, and cannot spend efforts to create knowledge, they look outside the organi-zation for knowledge One café we studied was located about 300 meters from one Starbucks on its right and about 800 meters from another one
on its left At the face of it, opening up a café in between these two, would seem economically irrational One would venture, that the SME will not have the resources, reach, or prestige to compete with the established Giants and would fail To our surprise, the SME is thriving and has actually managed to lure customers away IURPWKHLQFXPEHQW¿UPV:HDVNHGWKHRZQHU why would she do something, what in our minds felt as irrational, opening up a business in the midst of two rival competitors, she remarked,
³6WDUEXFNV KDV GRQH WKH UHVHDUFK«PDUNHWLQJ research…and has found this locality to be one
of interest to them…I am just using their research WRP\HQG«$OOWKDW6WDUEXFNVKDVFRQ¿UPHGYLD research is that people will spend money on cof-fee and pastries…they never said that they would drink Starbucks coffee…just coffee…so why not at
my café.” The owner has been very successful in
Trang 5exploiting research conducted by her larger
com-petitors to her ends For instance, she uncovered
that one of the common complaints regarding the
chain coffee-shops was that the environment was
not homely or community geared All Starbucks
or Seattle’s Best coffee shops have the same
look and feel, serve the same drinks, and even
play the same music; this is a natural outcome of
being in the franchise business Exploiting this
knowledge, she decided to build her café on the
premise of making it a central meeting place for
the neighborhood, this point has been the biggest
reason why her café has faired very well
In addition, to using ready-made external
knowledge, SMEs make it a priority to be well
connected with their localities In many cases
these localities house their customers and
sup-pliers Being well-connected in the community,
helps the SMEs use environmental knowledge in
an effective manner towards business ends For
instance, some of the restaurants in our sample
were located near universities These
establish-ments hired college students for their waiter and
bartender positions We thought that this was
be-cause of the economic reason of getting cost saving
associated with hiring student workers However,
the manager informed us that we were wrong, and
the cost savings were minimal Managers hired
students so that they could keep abreast of events
on campus Using the knowledge about events on
campus, marketing programs would be geared
for attracting students to dine at the restaurant
Common examples include discounted prices for
drinks and appetizers during and after college
sport games Discounted prices were provided
to student groups, such as the various clubs on
campus, to host their meetings at the restaurant In
fact, employees were given bonuses based on how
they contributed to the revenues of the restaurant
by sharing pertinent knowledge
In our experience, and in the literature, larger
organizations are less apt at exploiting external
sources of knowledge (Prahalad & Ramaswamy,
2004) Individuals within the organization may
rely heavily on outside sources of knowledge, but as a whole the organization does a poor job
at leveraging such sources As a classic example, consider the failure to various US intelligence agencies to heed the warning about terrorist plots from their counterparts in Egypt, the Philippines, Germany, and other foreign governments (De-souza & Hensgen, 2002) As we all know now, the external knowledge, if appreciated could have helped curtail the terrorist plots We postulate that the reason for lack of care on external knowledge
is the obsession with generation of knowledge in-house and independent of the external world
In recent times, we have seen an interest in get-ting organizations to embrace external sources of knowledge Prahalad and colleagues have called
on organizations to cocreate value with their customers; this will require the organization to accept the fact that they do not have all the answers and to work in conjunction with its constituents (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004) In some cases,
it may also be in the organization’s best interest
to collaborate with its competitors (Hamel, Doz,
& Prahalad, 1989)
Finding 5: People-Centered Knowledge—Technology in the Background
SMEs knowingly or unknowingly, manage knowledge the right way—the humanistic way Technology is never made part of the knowledge management equation The use of technology in
an SME is mostly limited to acts of automation (such as the use of cash registers) and at times for informative purposes (storing of employee contact information in databases) Technology is never used as a means to manage knowledge
Knowledge is created, shared, transferred, and applied via people based mechanisms These include the use of face-to-face meetings, obser-vations, apprenticeship training methods, and
so on Knowledge generated is immediately put into practice, rather than being stored in some
Trang 6obscure technology artifact, like a database
Put-ting knowledge into practice helps in immediate
institutionalization of the insight and the
improve-ment of work practices
Larger organizations spend inordinate amount
of resources on building, managing, and deploying
technology artifacts for knowledge management
These seldom help the organization get a
knowl-edge management program running, because they
do not get at the crux of the issue—knowledge
sharing and managing is one of human endeavor
Humans generate the knowledge and apply it
We do agree that technology can help the
pro-cess of knowledge management by streamlining
knowledge generation, storage, distribution, and
application However, for technology to be
suc-cessful there must be a solid foundation for it to
lie on This foundation is built by addressing the
humanistic issues involved in fostering knowledge
management SMEs have the advantage, due to
resource constraints, of not looking at
technol-ogy for the solution to knowledge management
problems Larger organizations can learn from
their efforts, in the fact that when issues surface
LQYROYLQJ LQIRUPDWLRQ DQG NQRZOHGJH ÀRZV RU
their application, the interventions used to resolve
the problem are human based Examples include,
helping bond employees via informal meetings,
job rotations for employees to gain experiences
in all facets of the business, and most important
reminding employees of the core mission of the
organization and rallying support behind the
mis-sion For our last quote, consider the statement
PDGHE\DQ60(RZQHU³,GRQRWKDYHWKHFDSLWDO
to think about technology…but if I did…I would
ask two question…will it help me deliver better
products to my customer and can I attract new
customers using the technology…if the answer is
no…I do not need it…no matter what fancy things
the computer [technology] can do…I am in the
people business…I rather use the money to take
my employees for a picnic…spending money on
my employees will ensure that they will be happy
with me and the organization and they will do
their best to help me serve my customers…hence make me money…technology will cost me more than I will reap.”
Finding 6: Managing Ignorance
In our research we found that SMEs are humble organizations, especially when compared to their larger counterparts One critical aspect of being humble is their quick admittance of knowledge
of areas they lack competency in Put another way, SMEs were very apt at telling us knowledge spaces they had no competency in, and more im-portantly, where they would seek such knowledge from One of the managers of a restaurant put it VXFFLQFWO\³ZKLOHLWLVLPSRUWDQWIRUXVWRUHDOL]H our strengths, we are well aware of our weaknesses and things we do not know…we constantly seek out ways to gain more information…but know that we will still be ignorant of much.”
Being humble about what one is ignorant about, is a salient capability required to man-age knowledge adequately For one, it helps the organization identify areas where it needs to get knowledge Needed knowledge can come from new hires, scanning external sources, or even creating it in-house Second, realizing that one
is ignorant in a domain, forces a more cautious exploration of the unknown This we argue is one of the reasons why SMEs, who are not in the technology business, are cautious in investing in technology artifacts Technology management, information systems, and information technol-ogy, are areas where most SMEs, obviously, have the least amount of knowledge in Hence, many are cautious with how they invest, hard earned, revenues in information technologies Most SMEs
do not dive in and go all out, that is commit to
a new system in total or switch to new systems
of operations They like to work in piece-meal They may start out with experimenting with a new technology, then working with one or more components of the overall system, and then may
be expand the scope of the information technology
Trang 7This cautious trajectory helps the SME increase
its knowledge of the technology in the domain,
and also test out the viability of the system
SMEs are also not afraid of calling on experts
to help them gain knowledge in areas of ignorance
However, understandably, they have resource
constraints, but they are innovative in how they
tap into the knowledge spaces The owner of a café
invited her customers who were subject matter
experts for a half-day event The event was hosted
at the café and was designed for the owner to gain
knowledge from these experts She provided the
experts with a free breakfast and coupons for
future coffee purchases, in return each patron
helped her understand ways she could improve
her business Suggestions ranged from marketing
plans to even technology enhancements, such as
making the café a wireless hotspot The owner
took these suggestions, and implemented a few
of them For one, the café was made a
wire-less hotspot; this instantaneously became a key
customer attraction mechanism, as many of the
larger franchisee cafés charged for the wireless
Internet access
Finding 7: Knowledge Management
or Management by Knowledge
7KHODVW¿QGLQJGHDOVZLWKWKHWHUP³NQRZOHGJH
management” It is common to think of
knowl-edge management as one of many undertakings
in an organization Most books treat knowledge
management as a distinct discipline from other
organizational facets (Davenport & Prusak, 1998)
In our interactions with SMEs, we failed to see
WKHFRQFHSWRI³NQRZOHGJHPDQDJHPHQW´DVRQH
that was isolated Rather, we assert that SMEs
IRFXV RQ ³PDQDJHPHQW´ E\ NQRZOHGJH WKDW LV
knowledge guides all management efforts
7KLVLVDUDWKHULQWHUHVWLQJ¿QGLQJDV60(VDUH
engage in managing knowledge in a more cohesive
manner when compared to larger organizations
You do not have knowledge managers or chief
NQRZOHGJHRI¿FHUVLQ60(VKRZHYHUNQRZOHGJH
guides all management efforts, and we must say that most SMEs are successful at leveraging knowledge The larger organizations can learn from SMEs, in how knowledge is integrated into the work practices and imbedded into the fabric
of the organization Managing knowledge is not
an afterthought or a distinct activity in the SME Engaging knowledge management into all facets
of the organization makes such efforts successful and mandatory
CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have elaborated on seven key peculiarities in knowledge management prac-tices found at SMEs While we have painted a rosy picture of how SMEs manage knowledge,
we must acknowledge that SMEs have their fair share of problems In a future paper, we could explore the problems and suppressors to effective knowledge management at SMEs Compared to research on larger organizations, investigations into the intricacies of managing knowledge at smaller enterprises remain largely unexplored
It would be wrong to assume that SMEs practice knowledge management in similar ways as larger organizations with the only difference being in magnitude or scale We hope this article has opened up avenues for future research, by stressing some of the unique issues involved with managing knowledge at SMEs Future research is needed WR H[SDQG RQ RXU ¿QGLQJV KHUH YDOLGDWH WKHP across a larger sample, and even help improve the state-of-the art
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This work was previously published in Global Electronic Business Research, Opportunities and Directions, edited by N Al-Qirim, pp 238-256, copyright 2006 by IGI Publishing (an imprint of IGI Global).
Trang 10Chapter 7.3
A Typology of Interorganizational
Relationships:
A Marriage, a Fling, or Something in Between
Wonyoung Lee
Marketing Lab, Korea
Praveen Aggarwal
University of Minnesota Dulut, USA
Hyonkil Shin
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea
Taihoon Cha
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea
Seunghan Kim
Samsung SDS, Korea
ABSTRACT
The decreasing cost of IT has encouraged
or-ganizations to seek new ways of cooperating
with members of the supply chain and other key
strategic partners This increased cooperation is
giving rise to a new type of interorganizational
system (IOS) Before the advent of the Internet,
,6 LQWHJUDWLRQ UHTXLUHG VLJQL¿FDQW LQYHVWPHQWV
on the part of organizations participating in an IOS Such heavy investments, in turn, neces-sitated close strategic cooperation in the non-IS domain, as well Thus, IS integration went hand-in-hand with non-IS (relational) integration in the pre-Internet era However, advances in Internet technology have commoditized IS integration to
...Knowl-edge and Process Management, 10(4), 218-230.
Ministry of Economic Development (MOED)
(2000) SMEs in New Zealand: structure and
dynamics... Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) (2002, December) Small
and Medium Enterprise Outlook.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development... Design
and methods Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
This work was previously published in Global Electronic Business Research, Opportunities and Directions, edited