The role of IT-enabled collaborative decision making in inter-organizational information integration to improve customer service performance

While inter-organizational information integration is believed to benefit supply chain management (SCM), prior studies have shown mixed results. Based on Organizational Information Processing Theory, we question this belief and highlight the importance of information technology (IT)-enabled collaborative decision making to deliver performance benefits and the contingency of the integration-collaboration-performance link on IT infrastructure to establish electronic connections in a supply chain. Analyzing the survey data collected from a sample of 188 trading companies, we find a positive structural relationship between inter-organizational information integration and IT-enabled collaborative decision making, leading to customer service performance, when a high level of IT infrastructure development is present. Our post hoc analysis verifies these empirical findings. For practicality, we propose an empirical taxonomy of firms for managerial reference in developing IT infrastructure in support of linking inter-organizational information integration with IT-enabled collaborative decision making. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.