Realizing the business value of interorganizational systems: The case of booknet, corenet and lawnet in Singapore

Abstract

In recent years, governments worldwide have been following the lead of businesses in seeking to put the Internet to innovative use a?? not only in their interactions with citizens but also with businesses. Specifically, some governments today purposefully a??intervenea?? to improve the efficiency and productivity of selected industry clusters by facilitating the implementation of interorganizational systems to streamline information flows among businesses and/or between businesses and government agencies. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this research is to examine how such implementations can be successfully facilitated within particular industries. Towards this end, an interpretivist study was conducted of three government-initiated industry-wide innterorganizational system implementations in Singapore: the discontinued BookNet versus the relatively more successful CoreNet and LawNet projects. This studya??s analysis of the three projects reveals the importance of shared institutional leadership, purposeful stakeholder cooptation and interorganizational sensemaking. In this regard, it is argued that the success of such initiatives may be highly dependent on the dominant sensemaking style adopted by the institutional leadership and on appropriately combining, pacing and timing various change intervention actions, as the project progresses.