On cross-enterprise collaboration

Abstract

Globalization, specialization, and rapid innovation are changing several aspects of business operations. Many large organizations that were once self-sufficient and that could dictate processes to partners and suppliers are now finding this model difficult to sustain. In the emerging model of global service delivery several competing service providers must work collaboratively to develop business solutions, either hierarchically or as peers. Overall project failures, uncontrollable delays, and significant financial losses have been observed in many global service delivery projects, indicating the importance of finding new ways to better support cross-enterprise work. This paper puts forth directions to explore the management and coordination of complex end-to-end processes carried out collaboratively by several organizations. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.