Assignment methods incombinatorial data analysis
Assignment methods incombinatorial data analysis
ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)
Localized technological change and the evolution of standards as economic institutions
Information Economics and Policy - Special issue on the economics of standards
Standards, selection and variety: an evolutionary approach
Information Economics and Policy - Special issue on the economics of standards
Coalition formation in standard-setting alliances
Management Science
Numerical analysis: mathematics of scientific computing (2nd ed)
Numerical analysis: mathematics of scientific computing (2nd ed)
Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system
Harvard Business Review
Interoperation support for electronic business
Communications of the ACM
Standardization: bridging the gap between economic and social theory
ICIS '00 Proceedings of the twenty first international conference on Information systems
Network Structure in Virtual Organizations
Organization Science
Opening the "Black Box" of Network Externalities in Network Adoption
Information Systems Research
Innovation and Control in Standards Architectures: The Rise and Fall of Japan's PC-98
Information Systems Research
Witty invention or dubious fad? Using argument mapping to examine the contours of management fashion
Information and Organization
Critical success factors in enterprise resource planning systems: Review of the last decade
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Proactive privacy practices in transition: Toward ubiquitous services
Information and Management
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Enterprise systems software (ESS) is a multibillion dollar industry that produces systems components to support a variety of business functions for a widerange of vertical industry segments. Even if it forms the core of an organization's information systems (IS) infrastructure, there is little prior IS research on the competitive dynamics in this industry. Whereas economic modeling has generally provided the methodological framework for studying standards-driven industries, our research employs social network methods to empirically examine ESS firm competition. Although component compatibility is critical to organizational end users, there is an absence of industry-wide ESS standards and compatibility is ensured through interfirm alliances. First, our research observes that this alliance network does not conform to the equilibrium structures predicted by economics of network evolution supporting the view that it is difficult to identify dominant standards and leaders in this industry. This state of flux combined with the multifirm multicomponent nature of the industry limits the direct applicability of extant analytical models. Instead, we propose that the relative structural position acquired by a firm in its alliance network is a reasonable proxy for its standards dominance and is an indicator of its performance. In lieu of structural measures developed mainly for interpersonal networks, we develop a measure of relative firm prominence specifically for the business software network where benefits of alliances may accrue through indirect connections even if attenuated. Panel data analyses of ESS firms that account for over 95% of the industry revenues, show that our measure provides a superior model fit to extant social network measures. Two interesting counterintuitive findings emerge from our research. First, unlike other software industries compatibility considerations can trump rivalry concerns. We employ quadratic assignment procedure to show that firms freely form alliances even with their rivals. Second, we find that smaller firms enjoy a greater value from acquiring a higher structural position as compared to larger firms.