Title:
Addressing Formality: A Conceptualization of Information Exchange
Coordination in Small Firm Business Transactions
Abstract: Based on a review of two existing frameworks for
business transactions, a complementary approach, based on the EDI measurement
scheme developed by Massetti et al., (1996), is presented in this paper.
Existing frameworks tend to neglect the information exchange aspect of coordination
by focusing on phases in business transactions. The complementary approach
consider coordination of information exchange from four different aspects:
volume, breadth, diversity, and depth of transactions. These four aspects
constitute a scheme of the information flow throughout transactions that
connect the external information environment with the internal information
infrastructure of business partners. The research reported in this paper
is beside the review of existing frameworks also empirical. Three case studies
of different dyadic relationship settings was conducted in order to test
the complemantary approach suggested in this paper.