企业间信息系统、不完全合约和战略供应关系

Interorganizational System,Incomplete Contract,and Buyer-Supplier Relationships

以电子商务为基础的信息技术的广泛应用,不仅降低了交易成本,而且导致了供应商关系的巨大变化。当搜寻成本和其他的协调成本降低时,传统的理论推断,企业将增加与之进行交易的供应商数量。虽然信息技术的发展导致了这些成本的下降,但是并没有明显的证据显示供应商的数量确实在增加,与之相反,很多产业中的企业却正在同越来越少的供应商做生意。本文将提出一个一体化的分析框架,研究信息技术对产业组织的全面影响,并应用这一框架分析企业间系统(IOS)的投资激励和资产所有权结构,应用不完全合约理论研究关系专用性投资和最优供应商数量的确定。

Information technology used to support electronic commerce transactions have the potential to trigger significant changes in supplier relationships by reducing transaction costs. As search costs and other coordination costs decline,traditional theory predicts that firms should optimally increase the number of suppliers with which they do business.Despite recent declines in these costs due to information technology,there is little evidence of an increase in the number of suppliers used.On the contrary,in many industries,firms are working with fewer suppliers. We are now able to offer an integrative framework for describing the impacts of IT on industrial organization.We apply our framework to analyze the assets and the ownership structure of IOS, This paper uses the theory of incomplete contracts to illustrate that incentive considerations can motivate a buyer to limit the number of employed suppliers.