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How Do Practitioners Understand External Platforms and Services? A Grounded Theory Investigation

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Advances in Information Systems Development

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 34))

Abstract

In this article, we investigate how practitioners understand external platforms, whose core offering is shared and utilized by a number of heterogeneous and interconnected organizations in an ecosystem. We especially look into situations where organizations wish to extend their own capability instead of building services that extend the functionality of the platform. Such dependencies to external platforms can be envisioned as the contemporary evolution from traditional outsourcing service models. We interviewed twenty-four practitioners from eight IT organizations and discovered a considerable ambiguity in understanding of what are the external platforms utilized by the organizations. We further elaborate that the diversified meanings that various stakeholders give to the concept of external platforms, can hinder efficient communication and may have implications on important strategic decision making.

A prior version of this paper has been published in the ISD2018 Proceedings (http://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2018).

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Academy of Finland (304439).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Anar Bazarhanova & Jesse Yli-Huumo

  2. Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland

    Kari Smolander

Authors
  1. Anar Bazarhanova
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  2. Jesse Yli-Huumo
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  3. Kari Smolander
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anar Bazarhanova .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Bo Andersson

  2. School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Björn Johansson

  3. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Chris Barry

  4. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Michael Lang

  5. Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Henry Linger

  6. Information Systems Department, IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

    Christoph Schneider

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Bazarhanova, A., Yli-Huumo, J., Smolander, K. (2019). How Do Practitioners Understand External Platforms and Services? A Grounded Theory Investigation. In: Andersson, B., Johansson, B., Barry, C., Lang, M., Linger, H., Schneider, C. (eds) Advances in Information Systems Development. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22993-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22993-1_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22992-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22993-1

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