SOA adoption in business networks: do service-oriented architectures really advance inter-organizational integration?
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SOA adoption in business networks: do service-oriented architectures really advance inter-organizational integration? Jan Löhe & Christine Legner
Received: 30 May 2010 / Accepted: 27 October 2010 / Published online: 23 November 2010 # Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen 2010
Abstract The emergence of the Internet as a global communication infrastructure has dramatically reduced interaction costs within and across organizations, with significant impact on inter-organizational relationships, vertical industry structures, and markets. More recently, service-oriented architectures (SOA) and Web services have introduced the next paradigm shift and foster the idea of dynamic business networks with quick connect and disconnect relationships. However, little research has systematically analyzed how companies leverage SOA to improve their inter-organizational relationships and reshape their business networks. In addition, the mature research stream on inter-organizational information systems (IOS) has not yet sufficiently considered SOA. In order to close this gap, our research seeks to improve the fundamental understanding of how SOA is applied in business networks and how it differs from prior forms of IOS. Using an exploratory research approach, we investigate 33 SOA cases to identify focus areas and patterns of SOA adoption in business networks. Our case analysis builds on a multidimensional classification scheme which we derived from prior literature. While our empirical findings do not confirm all promising propositions related to SOA, they underline the specific contribution of SOA compared to prior forms of IOS. We conclude by suggesting five clusters of SOA
Responsible editor: Rainer Alt J. Löhe : C. Legner (*) Institute of Research on Information Systems (IRIS), EBS Business School, Söhnleinstr. 8D, 65201 Wiesbaden, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
adoption in the inter-organizational domain, each of those introducing new aspects in the coordination of distributed business networks. Keywords Service-oriented architecture (SOA) . Web services . Business networking . Inter-organizational systems (IOS) . Integration . Business-to-Business (B2B) JEL Classification L86: Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
Introduction Over the past decades, specialization and globalization have lead organizations to engage in new forms of value creation and to rethink their organizational boundaries (Jacobides and Billinger 2006; Österle et al. 2001). The emergence of the Internet as a widely-accepted, global communication infrastructure has dramatically reduced interaction costs within and across organizations, which is said to foster the division of labor between organizations (Christiaanse et al. 2004; Hagel and Brown 2001). Since the early 2000s, serviceoriented architectures (SOA) and Web services have introduced the next paradigm shift by establishing service-based communication across heterogeneous platforms and among enterprises (Alonso et al. 2003; Erl 2005;
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