Informa UK Limited

This article asks which institutional structure is required for electronic markets to emerge. It proposes the adoption of a rather narrow concept of electronic markets, one which requires that electronic markets support the negotiation phase of a business process in order to identify those preconditions that are specific to electronic markets as compared to other inter-organizational systems. A theoretical framework is elaborated which distinguishes between the institutional regime shaping market participants' transaction behaviour, a set of meta-activities which establish and maintain the institutional regime, and a generative regime, which is the group of actors performing or promoting meta-activities. All three components constitute the notion of non-market preconditions of market systems, whether electronic or conventional. This theoretical concept is then used to identify the specific non-market preconditions of electronic markets in each of the three distinct categories. In the concluding section, the findings are related to the way in which electronic markets actually evolve and the areas of economic activity in which they provide a useful coordination instrument and in which they do not.

The adoption of information systems in healthcare is no less significant than in any other commercial or caring organisation. The literature on IS adoption in healthcare, makes it clear that the actors involved in the adoption process are almost universally seen as crucial, which matches our research results too. However, how such actors should be identified remains a topic for investigatory work since these are early days in achieving this. We derive and propose a structured method to model how actors might be identified: structured because such a rationale is explicable and such a method is more readily usable when transferred to others. Our structured method, named IGOHcaps, uses a static and then a dynamic step to pull out the individual, group, organisational and human determinants of the critical actors. In this process, the individual actors' differing views emerge which could enable decision-making bodies to produce more robust proposals if they incorporated some of the appropriate views. We discuss the application of IGOHcaps through a hospital case study. While a single case study cannot be a proof, the engagement of the actors was encouraging.

Logic programming has received much critical attention over the past two decades from both a language perspective and as a methodology for practical problem solving. This paper presents a historical foundation of the approach and examines the development of Prolog since its first implementation. An analysis of the use of Prolog in commercial, research and teaching environments shows that there is an established base of users and that, after a period of rapid growth, the language currently enjoys continuing activity. The key to its success so far is due to its continuing evolution by including features that were not seen as being within the original concept as a pure logic language. Significant features which have contributed to the success of Prolog include integration with other languages, object oriented extensions, constraint representation, parallel execution as well as improved speed and robustness. Applications databases are analysed with respect to type of application, system status, type of developer, hardware platform, country of origin and the Prolog implementation used. Factors contributing to the success of Prolog are identified and likely future developments are explored.

Two important views in the development of information systems are the action view and the reaction view which govern the areas of business process modelling and information systems modelling, respectively. We suggest an approach to mediate between these partially conflicting views by specifying a language-mapping framework. In other words, we specify a transition from a process model with human actors to an IS model with inanimate agents.

Netsourcing, a rather innovative form of web-enabled value creation, describes outsourcing of selected software applications to external service providers via the Internet. It promises flexibility and cost advantages over operating software applications in-house. However, it also raises the question which software applications corporate users should netsource and which they should keep in-house. To answer these questions, we develop a research framework with seven independent variables derived from the literature on full information technology outsourcing. On data collected in a 2004 survey among the 500 largest German companies, we apply a logistic regression analysis. As a result, we find significant statistical support for strategic management variables and no support for transaction cost economics variables as being relevant to the netsourcing decision. We conclude the paper with some lessons learned and suggestions for further research.