Manchester United Football Club: developing a Network Orchestration Model
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Manchester United Football Club: developing a Network Orchestration Model Duncan R. Shaw1 1
Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham, U.K. Correspondence: Duncan R. Shaw, Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB, U.K. Tel: þ 44 (0)115 84 67756; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract This paper investigates a particular type of coordination role called ‘network orchestration’. It uses a revelatory case study of the very large network orchestrated by Manchester United Football Club, a global sporting and entertainment brand that is partnered by some of the most successful consumer brands in the world and has an estimated 70 million fans (MUFC, 2007). We use business process modelling and systems theoretical concepts to investigate the complex horizontal and vertical relationships between partner firms and then develop a multi-level model of network operation, sustainability and governance. Inter-organisational networks are open systems that are sustained far from equilibrium by the constant flow of materials, energy and information that we have called a ‘value flow system’. Here we model the flow of commercial ‘value’ through the network that sustains it in a far from equilibrium state. The contribution for managers of orchestrator firms is an architectural model of the properties and mechanisms of network orchestration that aids value flow for network building and maintenance. The implication for coordination researchers is a development of Malone and Crowston’s coordination theory (1994) via the novel introduction of Hierarchy Theory to this domain. European Journal of Information Systems (2007) 16, 628–642. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000702 Keywords: Manchester United; business process modelling; cultivation; network; orchestration; inter-organisational; B2B; open systems; Hierarchy Theory
Introduction
Received: 8 November 2004 Revised: 21 September 2005 2nd Revision: 8 June 2006 3rd Revision: 17 April 2007 Accepted: 8 August 2007
In the last few decades organisations have been vastly changed as a result of the possibilities enabled by information and communications technologies (ICTs) (Nolan, 2000). These changes are compounded by the ability to link together the information systems of different organisations to thus enhance the operation of inter-organisational business networks across space and time. Focal business networks can be viewed as entities that process material and information inputs (raw materials) into material and information outputs (products and services). This is consistent with the systems theoretical concept of an open system which is a system that maintains itself in a state far from equilibrium by processing external inputs into ejected outputs (Checkland, 1999). On a lower level an example is a firm whose total value is deemed to be greater than the sum of the disposal value of its assets. Its value is increased by what it does, that is, its processes, in addition to what it constitutes. In an inter-organisational network the member firms
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