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Organizations operating in a network require strong information technology support to successfully collaborate. In a business service network, the links between partners must enable quick connect and disconnect relationships, in order to harness market opportunities. Scholars claim that information technology platforms are necessary to enhance this quick connect capability and to transform business networks into digital ecosystems. However, the state of the art in inter-organizational collaboration relies on static collaboration patterns between individual partners, and current systems are engineered without interoperability in mind. In this study, we follow a design science approach to promote the concept of platform-based collaboration. More precisely, we propose an architecture for an inter-organizational platform that facilitates the provisioning of collaboration services. Furthermore, we present a prototype in the context of e-commerce as a means of evaluating the proposed design. We conclude that the platform approach is beneficial in achieving increased flexibility in business-to-business collaboration.

IT governance research suggests the existence of a gap between theoretical frameworks and practice. Although current ITG research is largely focused on hard governance (structure, processes), soft governance (behavior, collaboration) is equally important and might be crucial to close the gap. The goal of this study is to determine what IT governance maturity models are available and if there remains a mismatch. The authors conducted a systematic literature review to create an overview of available IT governance maturity models. The study shows five new IT governance maturity models were introduced. Only one of the new IT governance maturity models covers hard and soft IT governance in detail. This model and corresponding instrument was used to illustrate its usability in practice. The authors demonstrate that combining the instrument with structured interviews results in a usable instrument to determine an organization's current maturity level of hard and soft IT governance.

•Survey of 127 articles on material passport or equivalent concepts.•Review of labels, boundaries, attributes, antecedents and consequences.•Conceptual definition of a material passport (or product passport).•Positioning view of the role of a passport for strategizing circularity decisions in supply chain management.•A research agenda for passports for the circular economy.

In this paper the authors aim to gain insight into the relationship between user participation modes and project risk factors, and then they constructed a model that can be used to determine how user participation can be successfully applied in ISD projects with a given set of risk factors. The authors performed an in-depth literature review, which aims to clarify the concept of user participation as part of risk management. They then report on the results of a case study in Cap Gemini where we conduct an exploratory research of the application of user participation in practice. For this exploratory research, a quantitative and qualitative research method was designed in the form of a survey and interviews. Through the results from their case study, the authors gained insight into the relationship between user participation and IS project risk and also determine how user participation can be used to mitigate such risk.

Abstract: The adoption of standards to improve interoperability in the automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding and other sectors could save billions. While interoperability standards have been created for a number of industries, problems persist, suggesting a lack of quality of the standards themselves. The issue of semantic standard quality is not often addressed. In this research we take a closer look at the quality of semantics standards, development processes, and survey the current state of the quality of semantic standards by means of a questionnaire that was sent to standards developers. This survey looked at 34 semantic standards, and it shows that the quality of semantic standards for inter-organizational interoperability can be improved. Improved standards may advance interoperability in networked business. Improvement of semantic standards requires transparency of their quality. Although many semantic standard development organisations already have quality assurance in place, this research shows that they could benefit from a quality measuring instrument.

In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure to the socio-technical structure of a software development team. We propose a socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts towards and away from the core can be considered as an indication of the instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery movements.

In this paper we apply the social network concept of core-periphery structure to the socio-technical structure of a software development team. We propose a socio-technical pattern that can be used to locate emerging coordination problems in Open Source projects. With the help of our tool and method called TESNA, we demonstrate a method to monitor the socio-technical core-periphery movement in Open Source projects. We then study the impact of different core-periphery movements on Open Source projects. We conclude that a steady core-periphery shift towards the core is beneficial to the project, whereas shifts away from the core are clearly not good. Furthermore, oscillatory shifts towards and away from the core can be considered as an Indication of the instability of the project. Such an analysis can provide developers with a good Insight into the health of an Open Source project. Researchers can gain from the pattern theory, and from the method we use to study the core-periphery movements.

Component-based development (CBD) can be an appealing proposition to globally distributed software development teams because of the almost endless possibilities to recombine and reuse components in new products. In particular, it has been suggested that CBD will improve globally distributed software development practices by allowing each site to take ownership of particular components, resulting in reduced inter-site communication and coordination activities. Such an approach may indeed overcome breakdowns in inter-site coordination efforts; however, it may also lessen opportunities to share knowledge between sites and may hamper opportunities to reuse existing components. A case study approach, exploratory in nature, was adopted to explore knowledge aspects in global component-based software development. Evidence collected at several globally distributed CBD projects suggests that the true potential of CBD, which mainly relates to reusing components, can also be achieved when components are developed in a joint manner (i.e. by several sites) by accessing and utilizing expertiseregardless of its geographical location. To improve the rate of component reuse, the studied teams developed capabilities in three particular areas: inter-site coordination, communications, and knowledge management. The paper concludes by discussing the links between component reuse, CBD principles and organizational capabilities, and offers managers and engineers some guidelines to consider in their CBD projects.

Webservices (WSs) are believed to be among the key technologies to enable the transformation of current static supply chains into dynamic virtual networks of enterprises. Others have said that these technologies are not yet ready for large-scale applications to supply chains and propose ‘traditional’ cross-enterprise integration methods. However, there is currently little research available that objectively evaluates the usefulness of WSs to enable smart business networks. In this study, this question is addressed through developing a typical scenario in which we transform a static supply chain into a ‘loosely coupled’ business network. We implement the scenario using state-of-the-art ‘enterprise application integration’ and WSs orchestration technology. The comparison of these alternative approaches reveals that WSs technology has some clear advantages above enterprise integration technology currently in use. However, there are also some limitations and research issues which are presented as a future research agenda for WSs technology.

Webservices (WSs) are believed to be among the key technologies to enable the transformation of current static supply chains into dynamic virtual networks of enterprises. Others have said that these technologies are not yet ready for large-scale applications to supply chains and propose ‘traditional’ cross-enterprise integration methods. However, there is currently little research available that objectively evaluates the usefulness of WSs to enable smart business networks. In this study, this question is addressed through developing a typical scenario in which we transform a static supply chain into a ‘loosely coupled’ business network. We implement the scenario using state-of-the-art ‘enterprise application integration’ and WSs orchestration technology. The comparison of these alternative approaches reveals that WSs technology has some clear advantages above enterprise integration technology currently in use. However, there are also some limitations and research issues which are presented as a future research agenda for WSs technology.

Component Based Development (CBD) promises a large step forward in the quest for maximizing reuse in software development. Although a variety of definitions of CBD exists, key to CBD is the process of building systems by way of combination and integration of pre-engineered and pre-tested software components. For CBD to be the long awaited breakthrough in software development, the efficient reuse of software components has to be organized by a market system; "Components develop their full potential only in a component market" [5]. Organizations may benefit from organizing an internal component market. Software components can then be reused over multiple projects saving valuable resources. However, the most appropriate marketplace to buy and sell components would be the Internet: an international, freely accessible network, which is perfectly suited for offering, promoting and distributing components. A flourishing component market on the Internet would really allow organizations to buy and reuse against low-costs. Developers would only need to focus on functionality specific to the project, and on locating and integrating available components.Industry watchers have predicted huge growth figures for the software component market. Gartner predicts the component market will grow to $7 billion in 2001, of which $2 billion directly comes from component sales [1]. Giga information group predicts an off-the-shelf component market of $3,3 billion in 2001 [6]. Ovum goes further by estimating the size of the software component market to be $64 billion in 2002 [3].But does a component market on the Internet already exist, and if so, what is its status? Also, if a component market is so important for CBD to fulfil its promises, what are the conditions for growth towards maturity? Apart from rough estimations of the future size of the market, little research has been done to investigate the current component market and its growth. It is the objective of the research reported on in this paper to gain insight into these questions.The research described in this article contained two phases: First, an overview of the current status of the component market on the Internet was created. Next, based on this overview and a literature study, conditions for growth of the market were developed. An email-survey was held in which experts were asked to rate these conditions by importance and comment on them. Section two and three describe the results of these research phases respectively.