Interfirm Conflict and Cooperation and the Role of “the Informated Boundary Spanner”

Organizations are more frequently looking beyond their traditional boundaries and arranging new interorganizational arrangements which are realized through the leverage of unique information interchange relationships -electronic linkages across organizational boundaries. This paper decribes how the SMARTS system (a decision support tool) was designed to stimulate interfirm cooperation and provide the users of the system with information to monitor and control other firm’s behavior. By providing employees at lower levels with information that supports their tasks and the process of their interaction with other firms, decentralized decision-making is made possible. Zuboff (1988) introduced the term “informated workers“ for the employees that through IT ( Information Tecnology) have access to high quality information. In the case presented such “informated boundary spanners” should be able to make better decisions based on this information and become increasingly important for interfirm coordination. The study uses qualitatative data to analyze the effects that informated boundary spanners have on interfirm relationships and coordination. Interesting findings regarding the use of information across organizational boundaries are presented. The use of information has implications for both the users of the system as well as the organizations that are being confronted with the system. In addition, the paper shows that the introduction of the system has interesting implications for coordination and conflict in interfirm relationships.