Modeling the IT-Infrastructure of Inter- Organizational Processes – Automation vs. Flexibility

As business environments become increasingly competitive, inter-organizational collaboration gains in importance. This trend is facilitated and enforced by the availability of powerful information technology (IT) that enables inter-organizational electronic communication and information processing. Besides improving the efficiency of inter-organizational processes through the automation of tasks, complex network structures with changing configurations become feasible that allow better responding to different situations. This trend is closely observed and analyzed in organizational and IT research. Although flexibility is frequently admitted of being a crucial feature to cope with today’s business requirements, the phenomenon itself is left astonishingly vague, as well as the means for its realization. After a review of previous literature, this paper introduces a conceptual framework for decision support in the context of designing and reorganizing inter-organizational processes. The concept specifically addresses the relationship between short-term and long-term efficiency resulting from alternative IT-infrastructures. Two case studies show the relevance of the framework and help to outline areas for further research.