Applications Driven Information Systems: Beyond Networks toward Business Ecosystems

Introduction

Organizational information platforms have advanced significantly during the past few decades. These developments have resulted in significant increase in effectiveness and efficiency of executing organizational business processes. Organizational information platforms are tightly coupled with organizational strategy and management of organizational business processes (Sauer and Willcocks, 2002; Chroneer, 2005; Zhang, Xue, Dhaliwal, 2016). Consequently understanding developments in the patterns of organizational information platforms requires a multifaceted investigation of business processes, strategy and environment. This study explores the development of organizational information systems from an organizational business process perspective in the context of business strategy and business ecosystem. We argue that the development of organizational structures and management of business processes has moved beyond the intra-organizational sphere of organizations and that the contemporary businesses cannot fully define their business model –i.e. customer value proposition and profit formula– within the context of their traditional business environment. The traditional view that separates organizational environment into two spheres of “specific environment” and “general environment” (c.f. Jauch and Osborn, 1981) may be useful for identifying key stakeholders and the relations among them; however for the purpose of profit formulation and strategic planning we argue that organizational environment should be viewed within the context of business ecosystems. After discussing the organizational developments in this domain, the study focuses on the evolution of adequate organizational business information systems which further supports the business ecosystem view of organizational environment.