EXPLORING THE ROLES OF TRANSACTION COSTS REDUCTION AND EXPLICIT COORDIN A TION IN MEDI A TING THE IM P ACTS OF IOS USE ON BUYER BENEFITS

This paper develops a research model on the roles of transaction cost reduction and explicit coordination in mediating the impacts of inter-organizational information systems (IOS) use on buyer benefits. Empirical tests find that both the transaction costs reduction and explicit coordination are significantly impacted by IOS use. However, it is found that the impacts of IOS use on buyer benefits is only mediated through transaction costs reduction and not mediated through explicit coordination. These findings may imply that the idea of competition is still dominating the mindset of many managers in their value chain management. And these findings may also imply that it takes quite a lot of time and efforts for both IOS initiators and adopters to adapt to the IOS use enabled explicit coordination before business benefits can be generated fro relevant parties. This paper contributes to existing studies on IOS use impacts by 1) developing relevant scales, 2) testing the roles of transaction cost reduction and explicit coordination in mediating the impacts of IOS use on buyer benefits, and 3) indicating future research directions.