Abstract
Manufacturing is an important factor in national economic welfare and information technology is increasingly seen as a vital instrument in manufacturing performance. Manufacturing is one area where a vision of extensive coordination through computerization has been articulated. This vision, computer integrated manufacturing (CIM), is usually advanced as a next stage for improving manufacturing efficiencies and performance by reducing intra-organizational coordination costs. The typical arguments advanced for CIM focus on improving organizational efficiencies through sharing, reusing and sometimes standardizing information. This paper shows how four theoretical perspectives - transaction cost economics, agency theory, resource dependency theory, and institutional theory - help us better understand the strengths and dilemma"s of organizational integration through computerization. This approach of using multiple alternative theories is being applied in empirical studies conducted by the Advanced Integrated Manufacturing Environments (AIME) project at the University of California, Irvine.
Recommended Citation
Kling, Rob; Kraemer, Kenneth L.; Allen, Jonathan; Bakos, Yannis; Gurbaxani, Vijay; and King, John, "INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN MANUFACTURING COORDINATION: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES" (1992). ICIS 1992 Proceedings. 42.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis1992/42