Planning Cooperation in Inter-Organizational Systems

The purpose of this chapter is to present a systematic reasoning framework (called e-Planning) to plan cooperation between organizations in a network. Thorough assessment of opportunities for and obstacles to cooperation is of paramount importance, as setting up electronic networks usually requires considerable up-front investments in information technology (IT) specific for this cooperation. E-Planning offers an action plan for decision makers to determine with whom to establish cooperation first, and on which topic to cooperate more closely. Following a method for critical problem solving, e-Planning provides guidance to analyze different potential partners and to reason about obstacles to and opportunities for cooperation. To illustrate and validate the framework, it is applied in the area of cooperation between customs organizations of member states of the European Union. Applying the reasoning framework in practice revealed several potential benefits, such as fast and successful assessment of cooperation needs that result in increased re-use of knowledge and software applications. In particular, this way of reasoning may prove to help decision makers cut down unnecessary expenses by, for instance, avoiding duplicated projects.