This article provides a brief description of the particular research area of each professor.
Professor Andrew McAfee
"His research investigates how information technologies from ERP systems to prediction market facilitate structured and unstructured multi party interactions, and the roles that general managers play in extracting the maximum value from their firms' IT investments.
Professor Marco Bettiol
"His research is focused on innovation processes and on the role of information and communication technologies in sustaining the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises.
Professor Maria Chiarvesio
"Her interest is to investigate how industrial districts SME's and local development systems are taking advantage of network technologies to face the challenges of internationalization and innovation in the new global competitive scenario.
January 2007
I had a lot of difficulty getting this specific post out, the only reason I can think of is the quality of the material. I think there is a lot of material here to build upon. My apologies for the length of this post, but reviewing it will help to understand the future of the energy industry and its Information Technology. It was in an attempt to be brief that I removed much of the analytical work around the three hypothesis of the authors. These did not necessarily fit in a clear and concise way, therefore, for brevity I removed those sections. Review of the actual document may be of value to all readers.
Abstract
This paper is directly in line with our discussion regarding the oil and gas industry. The use of the Military Styled Command and Control, as I have termed it, is necessary to offset the decline of the hierarchy. An organization requires structure to organize its resources. To eliminate the hierarchy, and not replace the command and control structures with something else would be highly and immediately destructive. McAfee et al state the following in their abstract;
"This argument introduces a contingency into the "electronic markets hypothesis, "which holds that greater use of IT is uni-directionally associated with reduced use of hierarchies."
and
"The paper therefore argues that when enterprise IT is required, so is an electronic hierarchy: a collaboration in which one member has all required decision rights over jointly used IT." pp. Abstract
Introduction
Recall our recent discussions on
Winter's et al and
Langlois' et al work regarding the boundaries of the firm, the division between markets and firms. How the capabilities and governance of a firm was being revised to optimize the technologies. To summarize that discussion I wrote this summary.
In this document, this conversation is being carried on and extended by McAfee et al with a predominant IT focus.
"Another important stream of research has focused on the boundary of the firm, analyzing whether greater diffusion of IT makes it more or less attractive to distribute economic activity across markets rather than within a hierarchy."
and
"This latter stream of work has largely converged to the conclusion that "By reducing the costs of coordination, IT will lead to an overall shift toward proportionately more use of markets - rather than hierarchies - to coordinate economic activity." (Malone, Yates et al. 1987). This has come to be known as the electronic markets hypothesis (EMH), and is broadly accepted; one review (Sampson 2003) found only a single conference proceeding that "queried the myth of diminishing firms." Variants of the EMH were articulated both before and after the explosion in business use of the Internet." pp. 1
"This paper aims neither to reinforce the EMH nor to refute it, but instead to introduce a contingency into consideration of IT's impact on the organization of work. (pp. 2) The appropriate governance mechanism for an IT facilitated collaboration, we argue, is contingent on the type of IT being deployed; when an enterprise technology is required, so is an electronic hierarchy". pp. 2
"So as enterprise IT becomes important, electronic hierarchies become the norm. This paper uses the term electronic hierarchy rather than simply hierarchy to convey that collaborators in such an arrangement do not surrender all (or even most) of their decision rights to a central authority. Instead, they surrender only a small subset, namely decisions about the configuration of jointly used enterprise information technologies. And to emphasize that this paper concentrates on governance rather than price-setting, electronic hierarchies are contrasted not with electronic markets but with electronic heterarchies, which are collaborations in which decision rights over jointly used technologies are not vested with any single party." pp. 3
I am going to continue using the Military Styled Command and Control Structure metaphor in this blog. The "Electronic Hierarchy" as McAfee calls it does not provide that much of a visual or rich environment for the future user of this software. The MSCC.
The precursor to this software's development is the success of SAP in most industries outside of the energy industry. SAP provides that "electronic" hierarchy, and command and control, such that SAP is the bureaucracy." (Cox, 2004). The validity of the McAfee et al argument is the difference between success or failure. A system built on the Joint Operating Committee without the hierarchy being recognized and built into the system would not provide the energy producer with the command and control necessary to operate. It is therefore important at this point that we quickly re-introduce the
Military Styled Command and Control (MSCC) structure that is an inherent part of this software solution. With a collective industry wide ability to recognize and adhere to the command and control structure offered to us by the MSCC, this application provides the underlying speed and innovation of the producer in a controlled manner.
The Electronic Markets Hypothesis
Not to be confused with the Efficient Market Hypothesis, McAfee et al define the EMH as
"By reducing the costs of coordination, IT will lead to an overall shift toward proportionately more use of markets - rather that hierarchies - to coordinate economic activity." (Malone, Yates et al, 1987).
This definition resonates with this projects purpose and builds support for the use of the MSCC. In the table provided, the segregation of items between the market and the firm helps to understand why and how the future oil and gas producer will operate and function. Here, in this comprehensive quote, McAfee states that markets provide better opportunities for enhanced economic activity.
- "IT reduces coordination costs"
"Malone, Yates et al. 1987, however, maintain that "An overall reduction in the "unit costs" of coordination would reduce the importance of the coordination cost dimension (on which markets are weak) and thus lead to markets becoming more desirable in some situations where hierarchies were previously favored. In other words, the result of reducing coordination costs without changing anything else should be an increase in the proportion of economic activity coordinated by markets". pp. 4
- "IT assets have low relationship specificity."
"In contrast, the circumstances under which IT favors hierarchies over markets, as articulated by previous research, seem comparatively limited. They include situations where. Network externalities exist and monitoring is available."
"However, the increase in monitoring capabilities brought by IT is an improvement along a dimension where hierarchies are comparatively weak. All other things being equal, then, this improvement thus makes hierarchies comparatively more attractive. Baker and Hubbard 2004 found that US trucking firms became more likely to own trucks and employ drivers, as opposed to contracting with individual truck owners, after improved driver monitoring technologies became available." pp. 5
I need to list this as a direct call to action. The future is uncertain, however, the manner in which the future unfolds needs to be defined in appropriate organizational structures. The Joint Operating Committee is that coordinating structure, McAfee et al state that it needs to be explicitly recognized in the information systems used by the producer. Enabling these coordinating capabilities within the software will allow improvements in economic performance.
The "Move to the Middle Hypothesis".
Not satisfied with the first part of this document, McAfee et al take on some more with this move to the middle hypothesis of theirs. Operational Decision Making in oil and gas on a global basis is on the participants represented by the Joint Operating Committee. This is a global culturally induced fact. The inherent nature of the risk profiles of companies and the areal extent of oil and gas operations are the primary reasons that most oil and gas wells, gathering systems and facilities are jointly owned and represented by the JOC.
...other considerations intervene and lead to organizational forms that are less fluid than spot markets. pp. 5
The "move to the middle" hypothesis concerns the size and stability of IT based multi firm collaborations, and does not address their governance. This paper meanwhile, focuses on governance, in particular the allocation of decision rights within IT enable multi firm collaborations. This focus appears to be unique in the literature on inter organizational IT. pp. 5
I have imputed before that the oil and gas industry has a distinct advantage in moving towards the JOC. The advantage is the JOC exists and is culturally, financially, legally and the source of operational decision making. This is also the reason that the SAP, Oracle and IBM styled solutions have failed to provide the systems that producers need. Those systems are not even aware of the JOC.
"Empirical support for the EMH"
McAfee then draws an explicit and relevant example to support the EMH.
The emergence of the Linux operating system is perhaps the clearest example that complex and economically significant products no longer need to be developed within single firms or traditional industrial alliances. The can instead result fro the collaborative, voluntary, and minimally directed efforts of individuals around the world who use IT both to execute their work and to discuss it. pp. 7
Today the Windows Operating Systems has been one of the largest software development ventures every undertaken. Billion of dollars have been invested and as this
video shows, failed. Yet Linux and Mac OS X, a derivative of the Berkeley Development Systems Unix are more robust, cheaper, and safer. Yet these two competing operating systems are developed by users that have a passion and a drive to get what "
they" need from an OS. The oil and gas industry producer needs a comparable capability to develop the software that it needs.
"Empirical anomalies"
Looking to define the EMH can also be derived from other situations and experiences. McAfee et al do this effectively with the two examples that they cite.
- "Of the 1500 B2B exchanges founded, the great majority no longer exist. This hypothesis, however, does not explain the paucity of some kinds of electronic link between customer firms and their small, stable supply networks." pp. 8
- "The failure of public eMarketplaces could be interpreted as support for the move to the middle hypothesis. pp. 9
- Finally, a dedicated empirical evaluation of the EMH yielded equivocal results. Hess and Kemerer 1994 studied the impact of computerized loan origination systems and concluded that "despite a decade of experience with these systems... the industry has not been fundamentally change"and conclude that "the [electronic markets] hypothesis will require augmentation in order to fully explain [our] results..." pp. 9
The implications of relationship specificity
McAfee et al, to my possibly biased opinion, I think have highlighted an appropriate success of the EMH in the operating systems available today. The B2B exchanges and markets should have worked, as there is really no new technology that was since available to the developers of the B2B exchange. But with all things technology, this time it's different. The use of XML as the appropriate means to integrate the hierarchy and structure of a transaction was not well used or implemented in the late 1990's. McAfee points to the type of relationship that B2B exchanges were attempting to conduct. And, if I understand him correctly, the transactions needed to be built within the exchange "and" the (in this instance) the producer.
This paper argues that the mitigating phenomenon is the relationship specificity of some types of inter-firm information technology. While certain technologies are easily redirect-able from one use to another, others are not. The relationship specificity of information technologies is an important consideration, and is proposed here as the required augmentation of the EMH, because it appears to be impossible to write complete contracts of IT.
The authors continue on with the logical argument that IT based transactions are attempting to emulate complex human environments. This ability I would argue is now possible and is one of the clear reasons that I am pursuing these possibilities.
High rates of innovation among IT producers and high levels IT investment among rivals combine to create a complex, dynamic, and uncertain environment. pp. 10
...but it can be done, and should be done in my opinion. This next quotation (verbatim) gives one of the reasons why.
If a shared asset is not redirect-able, however, the theory of the firm holds incomplete contracting to be a critical consideration, and has a clear prescription. As Hart 1989 says "one thinking I can be sure of is it ...assets are sufficiently complementary, and initial contracts sufficiently incomplete, the two sets of assets should be under common control." Asset complementarity and asset specificity are, for the present purposes, equivalent concepts. An EDI connection between two firms, for example, is a relationship - specific asset. Equivalently, the configured hardware and software requires at each end of the are complementary assets. The link as a whole, in other words, it a specific asset; the endpoint are complementary assets. pp. 11
Recall the works of Winter's and Langlois' and the table above. The complexity of interactions becomes the problem in that transactions can not be defined to the level necessary to conduct all of the possible permutations and combinations of them. This is where the JOC, which "IS" the legal and operational decision making frameworks of the energy industry, succeeds in providing value to the IT enabled producer. The codification of these explicit ways and means of operation are dependent upon those key attributes defined within the JOC. The Penalty clauses, the Overhead Allowances, the Decision making frameworks have all been defined by the industry over its history. The ignorance of these points by my competitors SAP and Oracle is they are essentially trying to retrofit a transaction within the firm, when the transaction should be made by the market.
The prescription articulated by Hart is widely accepted (see, for example, Williamson 1985, Grossman and Hart 1986, Hart 1988, Hart and Moore 1990, and Klein, Crawfor et al. 1978) because scholars have identified failing in both the formation and the adaptation of non-hierarchical organizational forms when both asset specificity and incomplete contracting apply. pp. 11
The failing that is being spoken of in this quotation points to the difficulty in this area. Hart points out the failure in industry in general, and with respect to the energy industry which has asset specificity and incomplete contracting represented in the JOC, the failure that has occurred in oil and gas is the inability of the systems vendors to explicitly recognize the JOC as the key industry construct. Or in other words the failure for the producer occurs not because of the difficulties of asset specificity and incomplete contracting but the lack of recognition of the JOC.
Formation
To provide some further support for what I have just indicated in the previous section. McAfee et al note the following;
"Initial scholarship on the theory of the firm (Coase 1937) highlighted that complex transactions among peers in a market were characterized by high levels of haggling and learning. When negotiating about a relationship-specific asset peers might attempt to define a complete contract even when one is not possible, or might engage in extra-contractual "side bargaining". Extensive haggling and learning delay the point at which a shared asset is put to productive use." pp. 12
Those with direct experience in oil and gas will now completely understand my point of view on this difficult topic. The JOC, because of its asset specificity and incomplete contracting, have defined contracts to this level. Pick up a
CAODC "Drilling Contract and one can see the codification of the entire efforts of the industry over its lifetime. This codification inherently identifies the assets specificity, its deficiencies regarding incomplete contracting
and implicitly the JOC. The IT systems recognition of these critical points does not exist, and that is why I call SAP and Oracle's solutions failures in the market.
Adaptation
If a group of peers overcomes the obstacles to forming a collaboration that makes use of a shared IT asset, they face another set of challenges as they attempt to adapt over time to disturbances in the environment. Williamson 1991 segments such disturbances into two categories: those for which prices serve as sufficient statistics, and those that "...require coordinated responses lest the individual parts operate at Cross - purposes or other wise sub-optimize." pp. 12
According to Williamson, hierarchies are better at adaptations where price is not a sufficient statistic: "As compared with the market, the use of formal organization to orchestrate coordinated adaptation to unanticipated disturbances. pp. 13
The unambiguous prescription from the theory of the firm is that if an inter-group information technology is a relationship - specific asset over which complete contracts cannot be written, it should be governed by a hierarchy with a single decision-making authority. pp. 13
A priori the JOC and the price system of markets.
A Technology Categorization
So which inter-group information technologies, if any, are relationship specific? Email, instant messaging, and Web browsers seem to their users to be almost infinitely redirect-able - which technologies aren't? pp. 13
The same is not true for the technologies listed at levels 2 and 3 in Table 1. They require complete and precise ex ante agreements about the data that will be exchanged and , if a multi-step process is to be executed, the "flowchart" of the tasks, sequence, and possible branches and termination points of the process. These complete agreements are required because the technologies at levels 2 and 3, which are referred to here as enterprise information technologies (EITs), involve the exchange of data between information system or modules. As the mythologist Joseph Camble remarked, "Computers are like Old Testament Gods: all rules and no mercy." pp. 14
implementations required an average of 21 months ( Configuring an EDI or XML link means determining the family of transmission that will be sent across the link and the exact syntax and structure of each. Configuring ERP involves defining the data the system will contain and the business processes it will facilitate, then "populating" the system to reflect these choices. Configuration is detailed and time - consuming work. A study found that ERP Hitt, Wu et al. 2002), and a case study revealed that 19 months were required to establish a single XML link between a large manufacturer and its distributors. (McAfee 2004) pp. 15
This is because the two car-makers are virtually guaranteed to have very different internal information systems and data structures, a phenomenon referred to as the "corporate household" problem (Hansen, Madnick et al. 2002, Chen Funk et al. 2001. Some scholarship on technologies such as EDI appears to assume that the definition and promulgation of level 2 standards by industry-level and inter-industry bodies will eliminate or at least reduce the household problems, thereby allowing redirect-ability. Detailed investigation of how EDI is actually implemented, however, reveal high levels of standards fragmentation and idiosyncratic configuration (Swatman, Swatman et al, 1991, McAfee 2003) and the exercise of power to force compliance with a convenient, rather that a universal, standard (McNurlin 1987). pp. 16
Not to highlight my competitors
SAP and Oracle, (oops Oracle is listed as just joined) but note the Public Petroleum Data Model that is summarily ignored by ERP vendors. This latter point of Oracle now being a member of PPDM.
Electronic Hierarchies and Electronic Heterarchies
Table 1 provides a basis for defining an electronic hierarchy:
"An Electronic Hierarchy is a groups of participants desiring collaboration, one of which has enforceable level 2 and or level 3 decision rights." pp. 38
In this work the term "market" appears to have two meanings: a forum in which buyers and sellers come together and the forces of supply and demand affect prices (the primary meaning of the word in many dictionaries) and demand affect prices (the primary meaning of the word in many dictionaries) and a group of peers without any controlling authority.
Which is consistent with the point of view of this software development.
An Electronic Heterarchy is a group of participants desiring collaboration in which level 2 and level 3 are not vested with any single party." pp. 18.
A pretty clear definition, I think, of the differences between operator and non-operator in oil and gas, and of how using the JOC would mitigate many of the administrative issues within the oil and gas community.
A groups of peer firms transacting on a spot basis, or the set of firms that make up an industry, on the other hand, constitute an electronic heterarchy. pp. 19
and
It is important to stress that these definitions for electronic heterarchy and electronic hierarchy concern only decision rights over level 2 and level 3 IT. pp. 20
Standards Bodies
I have spoken of the PPDM organization and I should mention the numerous other organizations that provide standards within the oil and gas industry. In Canada the, Petroleum Accountants Society of Canada (PASC), The Canadian Association of Petroleum Landman (CAPL), Association of Professional Petroleum Engineers, Geologists, Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) and many other organizations provide standards for use in the oil and gas industry. These standards make up a large portion of the culture of the industry, and due to the unique nature of the industry, as noted in this entry, these provide substantial value to a system integrator such as this project. However McAfee et al also point out one of the possible pitfalls.;
A number of standards bodies, some governmental and some industry-financed propose level 2 and or level 3 standards. If such as standard were to be widely accepted with 100% fidelity, that at least some enterprise technologies could move from relationship-specific to redirect-able. Two factors, however, mitigate against this vision. First, standards bodies are themselves fragmented, overlapping, and proliferating (Chari and Seshadri 2004) so a single pure standard is unlikely to emerge. Second, firms in practice appear to take work of standards bodies as a starting point for their integration work, modifying proposed standards as required to suit their idiosyncratic needs (for a case study of this, see McAfee 2004). As long as this is the case, configured enterprise technologies will continue to be relationship-specific investments. pp. 34
Conclusion
This paper presents a continent theory of the impact of IT on the organization of economic activity. In contrast to the EMH, the theory hold that in some circumstances electronic hierarchies will predominate. The theory, however, is silent about when enterprise IT (EIT) is required. It is not yet clear when, if ever, electronic heterarchies using network IT (NIT) alone are at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis electronic hierarchies using both NIT and EIT. pp. 35
The two categories of electronic hierarchy and electronic market clearly do not capture all of the existing modes of governing IT-based collaborations. pp.36
This paper was recently published by the Harvard Business School. Recently means February 13, 2007. It is a very topical and timely discussion of the many things that were being actively discussed in this blog. Markets and firms, Production and Transaction costs, Capabilities and Governance to mention only a few. If the energy industry is to glean any value from this body of research work, it will occur forthwith and immediately as a result of my efforts over the past 15 years. Recall that serendipity and luck are two attributes that I am grateful for. However, should industry pass on the proposal I have submitted regarding this software development proposal, then I would be hard pressed to determine a more appropriate time and opportunity then now to provide to the CEO's and CFO's of the major oil and gas producers. Since the deadline for the subscription deposit has passed, I would think that a reasonable period of time be provided in terms of grace, and then I will have to make another more comprehensive proposal to those that have signed their lives away through Sarbane's Oxeley.
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Photos Courtesy
Troels Myrup
It is at this point that I would also assert that the production process, which is inevitable and in constant decline, adds further uncertainty above and beyond that of the firm. This is why $79 oil seems very cheap to me. The following quotation of the authors provides a good understanding of the work that is done at the Joint Operating Committee. This is how the industry has developed and how it functions. Unfortunately all of the software development projects fail to capture this organization and its role in the day to day operations. This is the business of the business, and due to a number of forces the business of the corporations has become the oil and gas regulatory compliance, tax compliance, SEC compliance and this is where the ERP focus has lead the organizations to focus and consume their time.
Firms that devoted attention to the three areas above - strategy, organization and capability development - were more successful in their collaboration efforts. For a few firms in our study however, these efforts not only lent support to their existing business strategies, but also led to new value creation opportunities. Their investments to build capabilities, in turn, created options to pursue strategies that could not be replicated by competitors; especially those that managed collaboration like outsourcing. For these firms, collaboration had become a source of competitive advantage (see Figure5).
