ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS:THE EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE AND THEELECTRONIC MARKETS HYPOTHESIS

摘要

Early research on the organization of economic activities focused on the tradeoffs between in-house productionrnand the outsourcing of goods. The Electronic Markets Hypothesis (EMH) extended this analysis to IT-basedrnrelationships and predicts an evolution from tightly-integrated commerce (electronic hierarchies) to electronicrnmarkets. Alternatively, proponents of the ihmove to the middleln hypothesis believe that firms will move tornoutsource, but from fewer suppliers with whom they enter into long-term partnerships. Finally, the All-in-Onernmarkets hypothesis seeks to integrate both ends of the EMH into one environment combining multiple tradingrnmechanisms. While the standardization of IT has been named as an enabler for all of these effects, the existencernand effect of differing types of technological standards has not been adequately studied. A collection of short,rndescriptive case studies of the use of XML technologies by organizations is being prepared.rnThe case studies focus on the exchange of digital products in information-rich industries and seek to gatherrnevidence for the evolution proposed by the EMH and for effects suggested by the All-in-One markets hypothesis.