| To compete in the electronic economy organizations are forming complex relationships that go beyond mere transactions and instead emphasize on pooling of knowledge resources. Different from the traditional arm's length supply chains, these complex relationships manifest themselves in collaborative and communicative value networks. Business partners that are part of these value networks tend to share their knowledge to create new knowledge resources—collaborative knowledge creation—that are then brought to bear upon complex problems and capture of new opportunities. Sophisticated interaction and information systems infrastructures are the backbone for collaborating to create new knowledge through such partnerships.; We found that partners in value networks jointly create new knowledge: (1) to understand the market environment in which they operate, and (2) how to adapt to the ever-changing market environment. They do so by exchanging rich information with each other: information that is specific to partner's needs, broad ranging and exchanged frequently. At the same time they refrain from exchanging too much coordination information, which leads to information overload that reduces the capacity to make sense of the market environment.; Rich information exchange in turn is enabled by the interdependency of processes between partners: joint decision making and modular design of processes. Partners indulge in highly interdependent processes by building relationship infrastructural flexibility, customizing process parameters for each other, and making flexible use of technology to communicate with each other. The infrastructural flexibility is built on the foundations of standardized process and information interfaces. Also, while adoption of such interfaces by partners does not directly lead to rich information exchange, it is a signaling mechanism to instill goodwill trust between each other.; In essence, this dissertation integrates the theory on supply chain management, knowledge management and social capital to provide a glimpse of nature of knowledge resource based partnerships required to compete in the electronic commerce. Further, through empirical analysis, we establish the interrelationship between the elements of infrastructure in such partnerships and thereby provide guidelines to practitioners. |
