The Distribution of the Benefits and Drawbacks of EDI Use in the European Automotive Industry

tages of EDI-related technology and therefore can better judge the potential of EDI. This might weaken the risk-averse attitude towards investment in complex and expensive innovation. By analogy, we can sketch the same picture with powerful and innovative market players. The automobile manufacturing industry serves as a good example. There, a small number of manufacturers adopted EDI procedures and set de-facto-standards and so forced (‘slaved’) their suppliers to implement EDI as well. Not only did the suppliers have to adopt the latest state-of-the-art systems, but the still non-adopting suppliers had to act according to the increased pressure of competition. Consequently, later adopters were inclined to take over already established EDI standards. The utility of those standards increased and so did the attractiveness of adopting them. Thus, applying resources to a small set of firms with order of power may be more effective than distributing a flat rate subvention to a large number of firms. The promotion of additional organizations with power of order is likely to break the negative feedback cycle because it limits the ability of single firms to refuse the given standard. In fact, it is realistic to assume that by targeting interest-specific communities, critical masses may be permanently exceeded. An extension of this procedure in several branches of industry may do the most to spur the cascading of critical masses and, in turn, to promote the diffusion of EDI. A formal model can be found in [4]. [2] Haken, H.: Synergetics, An Introduction, Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions and Self-Organization in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, 3rd revised and enlarged edition, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo 1983. [3] Rohlfs, J.: A theory of Interdependent Demand for a Communications Service, in: Bell Journal of Economics 5(1974), pp 16-37. [4] Schoder, D.; Hellbrück, R.: Telematic Innovations Why Do Some Fail and Some Not? Conclusions for Marketing: International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT) '94, August 9-12, Kuala Lumpur.