The Future of Identity in the Information Society

Abstract

The organizations nowadays have shifted their identities to an open and extended profile in which their operations are not only internal but also external to their organizations and management. Thus, in the actual unstable environment firms overlap their boundaries and create strategic alliances and collaborations with their suppliers, customers and partners. In this paper, we present the case of an organization that is applying this concept. As an extended enterprise, it continuously innovates and creates new products using its dynamic capabilities. It seeks to leverage its relationships with its customers and suppliers through net-works creation. In order to develop further toward being an extended enterprise, its actual focus is on a partnership with the organizations, constituting a Dealers' network-providing after sales services to customers as assisting, selling, and re-pairing cars. Our focus is on the dealers' network consisting of small and medium organizations that represent the automotive company and that are the intermediary among it and its customers. Through this research, we are elaborating a model rep-resenting the collaborative mechanisms among the automotive company and its dealers' network that leads to knowledge creation and sharing about the automobiles components and services of this extended enterprise. The collaborative knowledge network (CKN) contributes to the sustainability of the new product development (NPD) process of the automotive company. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.