A conceptual framework for designing service-oriented inter-organizational information systems

Nowadays, the availability of the Internet and the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) have inspired the development of strategies that take advantage of the enterprises' abilities to create networks or to network with other enterprises. Those technologies help supply information to facilitate the communication and the collaboration as well as to strengthen the relationships between economic entities. Correspondingly, the concept of inter-organizational information systems (IOIS) has emerged as an indispensable infrastructure for obtaining more competitive advantages in the network age. On the other hand, service-oriented computing has become a promising approach for building service-oriented inter-organizational information systems (SO-IOIS). A SO-IOIS provides a loosely-integrated suite of information-intensive services that can be used within business entities in a network to coordinate their business activities. It provides significant value to inter-enterprise networks. This paper presents a conceptual framework for designing service-oriented inter-organizational information systems. An example about designing a service-oriented inter-organizational information system for a travel and tourism network is presented as well.