Interorganizational Business Process Redesign: Merging Technological and Process Innovation

Interorganizational business process reengineering is a logical extension of discussions in the 1980s of the potential for interorganizational systems to fundamentally redefine relationships between buyers and sellers and even competitors within an industry context. This paper presents a framework or model describing the relationship between technological and process innovations, and describes the interdependence of these two forces in the context of interorganizational business process redesign. This framework can be used to examine unique characteristics of reengineering within a single organization and across multiple organizations. This model is used to explain the inconsistency in the literature regarding the benejits of EDI and other interorganizational systems, which are described as providing strategic competitive advantage in some articles, and as providing little or no benefits for implementing firms in other articles. The framework describes the importance of merging technological and process innovations in order to achieve the potential to transform both organizations and interorganizational processes and relationships.