Research Programme in Supra-organizational Systems

research investment is recovered from sales of the resulting publications; the depth of understanding of supra-organi-sational systems (S-OS) is enhanced by consultancy work. The projects under-taken provide valuable information to user-organisations in the private sector, and in Federal and State Governments; to product and service providers and consultants ; to industry associations, such as the EDI Council of Australia (EDICA); and to organisations fulfilling policy and regulatory roles, such as the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the Federal Government's Information Exchange Steering Committee (IESC). large, complex and highly integrated, such as distributed CAD/CAM and CIM systems. During the 1980s, the combination of computers, communications and in some cases robotics (now referred to as Information Technology-IT), was applied not only within organisations but also across organisational boundaries. The needs of pairs of organisations operating in partnership are served by 'inter-organisational systems'. Such systems may involve a terminal installed in one organisation and connected to a processor in another, or direct links between the processors of two organisations; for example , reservation systems enable airlines to maintain direct contact with travel agents who sell tickets on their flights. In many cases, the economics of IT militate against the proliferation of inter-organisational systems. Instead, arrangements have arisen in which many organisations communicate through some form of common facility. The term 'multi-or-ganisational systems' is used for arrangements such as EFTS, whereby financial institutions conduct transactions electronically instead of via cash or paper-based documents. Another class of multi-or-ganisational system is EDI or computer-aided logistics support (CALS) and on-line or screen-based trading, in such diverse products as livestock, foreign currency , grain, shares and fish. We distinguish furthermore a class, for which the term 'extra-organisational sys-tems' has been coined. These systems A considerable amount of work has been undertaken on a variety of aspects of EDI. The scope has progressively broadened to include all aspects of electronic commerce encompassing the complete range of electronic services which can be used in support of the buying and selling of goods and services. Additional areas include on-line or screen trading, databases and catalogues, and commercial use of the Internet. Other areas of interest have been Consumer Electronic Funds Transfer Systems (EFTS), particularly financial applications of smart cards and computer matching. The orientation of the Programme is mainly towards business and policy aspects of IT applications. Support for the Programme has been attracted from a variety of sources. In some …