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Chapter 8 Discussion

Introduction

This chapter reflects on the main findings of the research in terms of its contributions

to: the key issues of the case study, questions raised in the e-commerce literature, the

methodology of agent-based modelling applied to these issues, and the stakeholder /

participatory approach. The latter two are very important aspects of the contribution

to knowledge because they are an original combination in methodological approach,

and so they shall be the focus of attention in this chapter.

Section one returns to the discussion of stakeholder participation which was presented

in chapter six, and extends it to consider in further detail the problems with lack of

feedback and access to the organisation. Section two considers the extent to which the

objectives of the participatory aspect of the case study were attained, and reflects

upon the experience of collaborating with industry by considering the usability of the

approach. It also develops some personal views on how the research progressed and

what was learnt from the experience. Section three compares three alternative

approaches to participatory enquiry, and draws some additional lessons from this

literature.

Section four reflects on the main findings of the research, by revisiting the original

research hypotheses, and considering how the case study has developed

understanding in these areas. The findings are placed in the context of the earlier

literature about the impact of e-commerce, and are used to make some observations

on the key themes of intermediation, value chain relations, and the integration of e-

commerce systems. In particular the section looks at the issue of how to attain a

widespread use from the perspective of the multinational. The contribution to these

debates is elucidated, in view of the extent to which the case study findings can be

generalised.

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Section five presents a critique of the thesis, focusing upon the related issues of lack

of data and the rather singular perspective of the research. Finally, section six

suggests some avenues for further research.

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8.1 Reflection on the Stakeholder Participation

This section reflects on the outcomes of the stakeholder involvement, and positions

the contribution to knowledge of this research in terms of participatory methodology.

As stated previously in section 6.1, the stakeholders were very important to

undertaking the project as they were involved in several key phases. To summarise

the research experiences described in that section, it was concluded that:

• Viability depends upon the interest of small number of people

• Obtaining required access to these people can be problematic

• Changing circumstances can curtail the research

The first of these points signifies that it may be difficult to get an initial ‘foot in the

door’ of the organisation. It illustrates the principle, described by Hammersley and

Atkinson (1983, pg. 60), of informal ‘sponsorship’ that serves to validate the presence

of the researcher and pave the way for access. Furthermore, as in this case study, the

sponsoring individual(s) are likely to be willing to fulfil the stakeholder role.

The second point signifies that there may be limited access to those persons and also

to the organisation. The nature of the relationship with the sponsor / stakeholder will

shape the development of the research in that it can facilitate some kinds of access

(for example, to the company’s sales data) and obstruct others (for example, to

knowledge about the customers of the company). From the third point it should be

recognised that access negotiations are ongoing and changeable, as explained by

Hammersley and Atkinson on their chapter on access in ethnographic research:

“The problem of access is not resolved once one has gained access to a setting, since

this by no means guarantees access to all the data available within it … negotiation

of access is therefore likely to be a recurrent preoccupation”. (Hammersley and

Atkinson 1983, pg. 76)

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One aspect of organisational access that was particularly problematic was that of

access to feedback from the stakeholders. There are three reasons that can be put

forward to explain the lack of feedback in this case study.

Firstly, there was a tendency to get sidetracked during these meetings. In particular, I

felt that we spent too much time discussing the breadth of what could be included in

the investigation rather than focusing on getting results from a small study, which

may have been a more productive use of the available time. Though very interesting,

the meetings failed to converge upon the practical considerations that likely would

have led to a more complete research investigation. This has implications for the

conclusions we can draw from the study (see section 8.5).

Without a doubt, it is easy to find oneself swapping ideas and stories and trying to

make sense of a multifaceted, emerging technology like e-commerce, and I must

accept responsibility for allowing conversation to drift from topic to topic. It was

interesting for me to hear about the practical problems and perspectives of those

involved in setting up these systems, and to see how this sat with the literature

produced. The stakeholders were very fond of exchanging anecdotes and stories about

their experiences, but were also interested to hear the latest academic views, which

were often outside the scope of their learning material and sources of background

information.

Setting aside these fertile discussions, in order to make good progress with the

research these experiences suggest that setting goals for each meeting would be

beneficial. Also the researcher must if possible take the initiative and set the agenda

for the meeting, in order to make sure those goals are attained.

The second reason to explain the difficulty of obtaining feedback is that there were

often long lengths of time between meetings. The stakeholders, and myself, would

sometimes forget what had been previously discussed. It is very important in

participatory projects that everyone knows what the others are doing, and what they

have agreed to do themselves. In contrast to many empirical methods such as

interviews or surveys, in participatory projects the ‘subjects’ of the research are

themselves part of the research team.

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It was perhaps unavoidable that there are large gaps of time. Lack of man-hours to the

project meant that progress was quite slow and a long time had passed between the

data collection and the point where the first results were available (a period of 9

months) for example. During this time I did provide a report on the fieldwork analysis

– a partial first draft of chapter five of this thesis. However, the stakeholders perhaps

felt that they did not know what I was doing during these times. This was a comment

dropped by one of them before our final meeting, and I suspect it to be partly a result

of these relatively large time gaps. If there were a regular communication between

participants, then this problem (of lack of face-to-face contact) would be alleviated, to

some extent. This is important because large gaps in time are likely to increase the

danger that the participants interests in the project will diminish.

Thirdly, and finally, the largest reason for poor feedback was the increasing lack of

involvement of the stakeholders because of their time constraints. My research

logbook shows several cancelled or rescheduled meetings and lower e-mail and

telephone response. In my opinion, this was clearly the most important reason for the

lack of feedback. On more than one occasion, the stakeholders themselves said that

their own time constraints were the main factor in their lack of involvement, adding

that they were regretful of this situation.

They did evaluate the model, and provide feedback in a limited sense, which was less

than had been expected. We tested the model by discussing the list of drivers and

inhibitors of Internet e-commerce that were based on the fieldwork findings, and by

discussing the endorsements model that was being developed. We also looked at

some of the preliminary results, once the model was working, but this was quite brief.

Most of the time was spent discussing the assumptions of the model, which was in

fact more appropriate at that stage of development (see section 6.6).

Given that one feature of participatory enquiry is the likelihood of access problems

mentioned earlier, and given the discussion of the problems of achieving feedback

issues, one final principle would recognise the imperative to take all opportunities

available to proceed with the work to a satisfactory conclusion.

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The next section considers what was achieved by the research approach, in terms of

informing the stakeholders and bringing insight to their understanding of some

aspects of the business.

8.2 Reflection upon the Usability of the Approach

One of the objectives was for the research to produce some findings that would be

useful to the stakeholders. This section reflects upon the question of how well the

approach did what it was hoped in chapter four - what exactly it achieved in terms of

helping the stakeholders. Bearing in mind here what was discussed in 8.1, i.e. the lack

of involvement on the part of the stakeholders, it is difficult to answer this question.

As stated earlier, I did set out to inform stakeholders on the benefits and opportunities

associated with the development of e-commerce. However, this was found to be

difficult in practice, as result of the lack of access. This became increasingly a

problem after late 2002 whilst the model was still under development and the

experiments had not yet been carried out.

The results from the prototype experiments that were taken back to the company

inspired the stakeholders to ask questions and pursue the introduction of further

studies (i.e. surveys), which is an indication of their interest and the fact that they

value the potential of this kind of work to highlight customer relationship and internal

efficiency shortcomings. In addition, they could see how it could lead to MAS

applications, for example they were interested in the development of software

systems for managing and analysing their e-commerce data. This kind of research and

its applications was seen by the stakeholders as something which could give them an

advantage in terms of expertise in e-commerce, which was something considered very

important within the strategic planning of the company.

To clarify, the situation was that the research approach was seen as showing strong

potential to be useful to the stakeholders, and indeed it did produce some interesting

findings (see later section 8.4 for a summary), though ultimately these findings were

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not used by the stakeholders or the organisation to inform policy making in the sense

of the perspective of action research.

Action research is based on the premise that the participants will act upon the findings

of the research, that the research and the real-world problem situation are directly

entwined, and therefore any intervention capabilities are planned for and made a part

of the research design. Viewed from the perspective of action research, the

participatory method that was used in this project could have had a much more

problem-solving and interventionist focus. Instead there was more of an emphasis

placed upon observation, description and reflection than upon choosing particular

courses of action. In this sense, the approach has more in common with a soft systems

methodology (SSM) approach (Checkland 1981; Checkland and Scholes 1990) than

with action research. Hindle, Checkland et al. (1995) discuss differences of research

objective focus by comparing social science, action research and soft systems

methodology. We return to the comparison with SSM and other participatory

approaches in the next section (8.3).

The idea of taking action based on the findings of this case study was discussed at the

beginning of the project. Furthermore, although it was put forward as part of an

‘evaluation’ in an internally circulated e-mail, the fieldwork was clearly considered

by some of the interview respondents as an investigation which may inform some

course of action. This can be linked to the literature on ‘models of the researcher’ as

‘expert’ or ‘critic’, that may be an inaccurate expectation on the part of the manager

(Hammersley and Atkinson 1983, pg. 75)

However, I do not know that any decision-making in the organisation relating to e-

commerce has been influenced by the findings. Moreover, it is unlikely to contribute

to policy change at the company or within the value chain. This is a result of several

factors. Firstly, the collaborators did not evaluate the results in detail, partly due to

changing circumstances at the company. Secondly, company policy in e-commerce is

still emerging and taking new directions. For example, the company is now

reconsidering the possibility of direct sales via the Internet to all customers, an

outcome that had been ruled out at the time of the study.

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Company policy on intermediation might similarly change in line with overall e-

commerce strategy. At the time of the study, policy suggested allowing

disintermediation of a limited number of less competent / technologically reluctant

suppliers. Whilst intermediaries would not be deliberately cut out of the chain, there

might be a more subtle process where certain suppliers are favoured over others, with

the main objective of improving customer service provision.

Such fast-changing policy implies that the model will be increasingly difficult to keep

up-to-date and relevant. This is an unfortunate but typical state of affairs where e-

commerce policy is concerned – it should be remembered that industry is still in the

very early stages of developing Internet EC systems. Furthermore, other research

(Caswell 2000) has shown that manufacturers are not very successful at stating their

EC policy, though at least most are aware of the likely importance of this technology

in the future. These factors underline the difficulty of doing modelling to inform

policy making in this area.

These difficulties notwithstanding, I do believe that the approach has potential to be

used in a more interventionist manner. There are a number of conclusions that can be

made from the evidence of this project, which would guide future participatory

projects to make them more useful to stakeholders. Firstly, there needs to be

developed ways to speed up the development process of models to complete them in a

more useful time frame. Secondly, it was apparent that developing better visualisation

tools would illustrate the dynamics of the model and make the simulation outcomes

more understandable. Thirdly, developing closer links by planning for regular

meetings would give the stakeholders more control over the direction of the research,

and allow them to fine-tune it as their needs change over the course of time.

It should be stated that, as a modeller entering an organisational setting for the first

time, I was very much on a learning curve in forming my strategy for doing

participatory research. Without taking much heed of other participatory approaches, I

conducted the research on e-commerce impacts with the input of the two stakeholders

who were acting as my ‘sponsors’. As demonstrated in section 8.1, this rather naïve

approach lead to the unfolding of research issues typical of those relating to what are

considered the ‘classic’ problems of ethnography, i.e. access and field relations.

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In view of this fact, consideration of other participatory approaches in the literature

has been deferred to this chapter rather than in an earlier section where the case study

methodology was described (section 4.2). In the next section, these participatory

approaches are explored with a view to suggesting what lessons might be learnt from

them that were not considered in the case study, and how these lessons could be

absorbed into future agent-based modelling research.

8.3 Other Participatory Approaches

The purpose of this section is to make comparisons between the stakeholder approach

used in this case study with other established participatory approaches: cognitive

mapping, business process modelling (BPM), and soft systems methodology (SSM).

Cognitive mapping is a technique used by management and organisational researchers

which has its roots in the field of cognitive psychology (Korzybski 1933; Tolman

1948). It aims to offer cognitive explanations for organisational performance, and is

used, chiefly, to study the understandings and thinking of managers and how this is

linked with knowledge and learning in the organisation.

The cognitive map itself describes individual managers’ mental maps (i.e. their

internal representations of particular domains of business knowledge) by identifying

the sets of concepts which the managers perceive, and their beliefs about how those

different concepts are related. Although the relationship between two concepts A and

B could be any specified phenomenological relationship (e.g. A is a member of B, or,

e.g. if A then not B) it is most common to study the causal or efficacy relationships,

i.e. those of the form A influences B or A is an outcome of B. The resulting maps are

known as cause maps. Cause maps are of great interest to strategy researchers

because they are believed to best reflect decision and policy-making in the

organisation.

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The traditional matrix (Bougon, Weick et al. 1977) technique for eliciting this

information involves presenting the manager with a pairwise sequence of elements,

and asking for clarification of the efficacy relationship. Constructing the matrix and

calculating the indegree values could lead to the discovery of interesting patterns in

the data. An alternative technique used by qualitative researchers involves semi-

structured interviews with management (Eden 1988; Laukkanen 1994). The objective

is to probe the manager’s cognitive structures by similarly focusing on questions

about the causal relationships amongst a number of key concepts.

Both techniques involve creating lists of standard terms to group together sets of key

terms or concepts having a virtually identical meaning. The main difference is that

with the former technique, the standard terms must be defined well in advance of the

fieldwork, whereas the second technique allows a more flexible approach in terms of

the ability to derive the standard terms from the data and to analyse the data using

more than one set of terms. On the one hand the data analysis technique used in

cognitive mapping is rigorous and less dependent upon the interpretative skills of the

researcher. However, on the other hand the potential drawback of cognitive mapping

is that the technique tends to isolate features of managerial cognition from their social

and organisational context.

There is plenty of discussion about comparison of different maps across and between

organisations and management groups (Laukkanen 1994; Swan and Newell 1998). It

is also standard practice to involve stakeholders in the role of evaluating the graphs.

There is starting to be more of a focus upon how to mediate between the individual

maps generated by the technique, and the normative patterns of the organisational

culture. Researchers want to understand the performance of the organisation and how

it can be improved through learning and effective use of the knowledge that has

accumulated over time.

However, because the mapping technique tends to reveal quite well established

patterns of managerial thinking, it is difficult to capture learning processes with this

approach unless the researcher can be involved during a period of organisational

change.

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Another approach which uses participatory techniques and analyses qualitative data is

Business Process Modelling (BPM). In this sense it has similar objectives to the

modelling approach described in this thesis, that is, to understand the impact of

technological systems. In particular, the objective is to assess the technical feasibility

of developing a computer system by analysing the business processes to identify the

improvements that could be made and the steps to be taken to achieve them. In other

words, to perform a requirements analysis to support organisational change.

Firstly, it should be noted that there is a similarity between business process and

value chain activity – they are seen in a similar light by both communities because

they both stress the value adding nature of these processes. Also both consider

activities undertaken jointly across organisations as within their scope of interest.

More specific concepts used in BPM are as follows:

• The model consists of a number of processes, each of which have defined

goals

• There are many agents (customers, employees, machines) that carry out

different roles within the system

In the sense that this analysis is process centred, concerned with dynamic behaviour,

and involves different types of agent, there are evident similarities in the BPM

perspective as that of ABM.

The analysis will involve different groups of stakeholders participating in the research

and will incorporate cycles of reformulating and re-evaluating the problem. In this

approach, the research design more deliberately makes use of the model to provide a

common language for discussion among the participants. It aims to provoke a

discussion amongst the various stakeholders that will identify the issues of contention

and conflict as well as the points of agreement. This can be the first step to reaching

consensus through negotiation. Loucopoulos (2003) describes the qualitative testing

of models with the input of many stakeholders as follows:

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“The deployment of testing parameters at each key process element encourages

group brainstorming through which participants could focus on alternative solutions

and envisage potential behaviour of the system prior to its implementation.”

(Loucopoulos 2003)

Since one of the main objectives of BPM is to support the process of reaching

agreements among the groups in order to support the collective making of decisions

impacting on the use of computer technology in organisations, it shares similarity

with the action research methodology discussed in the previous section. The research

is aimed at aiding managers to take action within the context of implementing new

computer-based systems.

SSM (Checkland 1981; Checkland and Scholes 1990) arose out of the realisation that

it was very problematic to apply systems engineering principles ("hard" systems

theory) to managerial decision-making. It was developed by operational research

scientists to resolve situations of high ambiguity due to the subjective views of

different stakeholders on what constitutes the research problem (Hindle, Checkland et

al. 1995). SSM aims to elicit managers’ “worldviews” and use this understanding to

base the discussion and negotiate agreements among stakeholders. This involves

constructing models of ‘purposeful human activity systems’ which are proposed

solutions for going from a starting state to some desired end state.

The system diagrams produced are called “holons” and normally consist of

contingent relations represented by arrows linking the activities. The diagrams

therefore resemble those used in cause mapping research. However the differences

are that the holon is an organisational worldview rather than an individual one, which

integrates the views of all stakeholders in a single system diagram, and that it is more

prescriptive in terms of describing a desired path, solution, or opportunity for

intervention, rather than describing the understandings of managers in any business

domain. For these reasons it produces a less descriptively rich (i.e. qualitative)

formalisation than that encapsulated in either BPM or cognitive mapping diagrams.

In other words, SSM provides tools for making a problem more specific. It relies

heavily upon the experienced researcher acting as a ‘process facilitator’ to encourage

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the stakeholders to engage in negotiation and development of a process model. It is

suggested that better results can be obtained when the facilitator has a relatively

vague problem definition in the early stages in order not to constrain the project.

However, it is also proposed that a formal methodology should be stated in advance

of undertaking the research, which describes the aims of the intervention as well as

the framework of ideas or theories that will be applied.

The central issue of SSM of the contrast between the imprecision of the problem

domain and the formal nature of the available techniques is one that is also key to the

field of social simulation. In both approaches, the design of models is seen as a

disambiguation process that abstracts from the problem definition and research issues

(which may be contested) to a limited set of formal statements (a process model or an

agent-based model). In the abstraction process much of the complexity of the problem

is lost, and this leaves us with the difficult issue of identifying to what extent the

model is representative of and relevant to the problem area.

Concluding from this discussion of other participatory approaches, ABSS can draw

upon these insights to inform future interactions with domain experts or field

‘insiders’. In a similar way to SSM and BPM, interactions that involve identifying

(and generating debate about) participants’ conflicting worldviews could become a

good focus for eliciting knowledge. Any consensus-building activity that takes place

within this context would be useful in developing the conceptual model of business

activities, and the engagement would be a bridge to them becoming more strongly

engaged in the subsequent stages of evaluation.

A further principle that can be taken from this discussion is that stakeholders may

require the researcher’s guidance in coming to conclusions and reaching consensus, in

far more of an advisory capacity. This could be carried out by ‘chairing’ the

discussion. The modeller must possess skills in acting as an interface between the

stakeholders and the model as well as facilitating debate and consensus-building

amongst the stakeholders in order to fully realise the potential of the approach. This

role requires a lot of additional work on the part of the researcher, and skills that need

to be attained through experience of working in different research and organisational

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settings. The difficulties of engaging the stakeholders could be eased by the use of

more intuitive model visualisation tools, and by using less jargon, for instance.

8.4 Revisiting the Research Hypotheses

In this section the findings of chapters five, six and seven are discussed and evaluated

against the research hypotheses presented in chapter four. It outlines the contribution

of this research to knowledge about value chain, e-commerce and intermediation

issues.

In section 4.2.4 it was hypothesised that market intermediation will remain a very

important function in the distribution of the manufacturer’s products, based on the

nature of the products, which are generic, and the nature of the market, which is

diffuse. In chapter five, however, it was seen that there are factors which complicate

this analysis, namely that products are increasingly seen as complex in terms of

requiring specialist knowledge in developing and marketing them. Management want

to promote these ‘specialised’ characteristics of their products and services over the

traditional image of ‘off-the-shelf’ products sold by ‘box-shifting’ distributors.

E-commerce is part of this developing perspective because it is also seen as enabling

greater collaboration in product development as well as facilitating stronger customer

relations management. These aims (of management) are not served by market-like

interactions but instead require the development of high knowledge and expertise in

working with customers. Whilst rejecting market-like arrangements as a solution for

these requirements, it should also be recognised that there are problems with

vertically-integrated (i.e. hierarchical) operations since, as discussed earlier, it is

difficult for the company to achieve an expertise over many different business areas.

Drawing upon the fieldwork analysis of the case study, the favoured strategy was

found to be one of encouraging more customers to deal through distributors, and

encouraging those distributors to provide the required consultancy / technology

expertise or advanced e-commerce facilities as their ‘co-specialised asset’. This can

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be described neither as a strict markets nor a hierarchies solution to the distribution

arrangement, but a form of tightly-coupled network whose function is best described

by the value chain perspective.

The effect of the introduction of e-commerce technology is to make production and

distribution processes more complex and knowledge intensive. This increase in

complexity is consistent with the finding that a limited amount of disintermediation

was anticipated in the wake of the e-business initiative. However, new opportunities

were shown to exist in developing expertise in value-adding activities such as

improved inventory management systems or specialist technical knowledge of

developing market sectors. Whilst the overall market share of intermediation was

expected to go up, there would be increasing competition amongst distributors that

would make it an increasingly difficult climate to do business without some kind of

‘advantage’. Furthermore, from the manufacturer’s perspective it was thought

imperative that the improvements in the transparency of business information should

be carried through to the smaller customers. These two factors (the increasing

competition and the information imperative) would likely threaten the intermediaries

and lead to a reduction in their number.

The case study findings suggested that some of the distributors will struggle to

reintermediate themselves under a fully enabled e-commerce system, one where

electronic orders might potentially be mandated by the manufacturer. On the future of

those distributors, there was detected a very pessimistic view on the part of some

respondents. Furthermore, in the literature review there were few actual examples of

the disintermediation – reintermediation (IDR) cycle in e-commerce where a

particular company has successfully managed to adapt. However, one factor which

may have been neglected is the difficulty of setting up the longitudinal case studies

required to track such adaptations. This could be an area for future research.

Experiments with the simulation model looked at the importance of price and

technical competence characteristics of the distributors. Comparing across different

scenarios, analysis of intermediary performance (market share, profitability and

survival rate) suggested that intermediaries profitability is strongly correlated to

intermediaries’ technical competence, but it is not correlated to selling price. In

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addition, agents that do not survive in the simulation always have the lowest technical

competence level. Market share is closely related to price, but due to variability in

intermediary mark-up, agents with large sales are not necessarily the most profitable.

Simulation results seemed to support the analysis of the fieldwork. Some

intermediaries having low technical knowledge might not survive in a value chain

augmented by Internet technology; increasing competition would make it difficult for

them to remain profitable.

Bearing in mind the earlier literature on adoption of EDI technology, research

questions centring upon diffusion of e-commerce systems were investigated. The

fieldwork showed that, most importantly, the onus was on the manufacturer to

describe the possibilities of EC to the customers, and to make it attractive for them to

adopt. A heavy reliance would be laid upon the different support strategies that were

available to the company. The study revealed these incentives or ‘drivers’ of e-

commerce, along with a number of inhibitors, largely result from technical and

organisational under-preparedness of the customers and distributors. Clearly if the

manufacturer does take into account such obstacles to diffusion, the customers will

not be able to engage effectively in EC and hence the value chain will under perform.

These factors were then later incorporated prominently in the simulation model as

customer perceptions and beliefs. The model was intended to be representative of the

case study situation, and was reliant on the input of the stakeholders for establishing

the validity of the mapping between model and target system. Simulation experiments

were carried out to investigate the issues surrounding the e-commerce initiative and to

develop understandings of those scenarios.

The model was also based on the assumption that social influence plays an important

role in the attitude formation of potential users of the e-commerce system. Scenario

analysis carried out with the model suggested that a simple customer-customer

referrals process can produce a strong effect in influencing agents’ choice of supplier

that can ultimately drive high levels of inequality in market share for intermediaries,

as well as changes in levels of adoption and use of e-commerce.

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The results on intermediaries’ market shares were plotted to test for the existence of

the Pareto Power Law distribution, a ‘statistical signature’ of many observed market

systems, and there was found to be a logarithmic relationship between the cumulative

number of units sold and the ordering of intermediaries. Experimental outputs also

exhibited s-shaped e-commerce adoption and usage curves, resembling patterns

identified in empirical studies of technology diffusion, as well as the actual uptake

plotted from statistical logs collected by the stakeholders for the first fourteen months

of operation of the electronic mall.

In summary, a combination of interpretative fieldwork analysis and agent-based

modelling research was used to address the research hypotheses and produce some

findings and conclusions to add to knowledge on value chains, intermediation and the

impact of e-commerce.

Whilst it is not proposed that modelling techniques developed here are sufficiently

penetrating to use as replacement for multiple, qualitative case studies, it can be

argued that much can be gained from using agent-based modelling in parallel. In

essence, this is the argument for multimethodology – a debate which is attracting

much attention in the area of management of information systems. In this thesis,

agent-based modelling is put forward as one such alternative.

Moving on from the discussion of what new knowledge or insight has been gained

from this case study, the next section considers the issue of limitations to the

approach.

8.5 Limitations of the Research

In addition to the main shortcoming, the uncertainty over the extent to which the

research would be useful to the stakeholders, discussed in detail in section 8.3, there

are other areas where the limitations of the findings should be clarified.

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A critique of the thesis should focus upon the lack of data to inform the model, such

as the basic information about the nature or characteristics of intermediaries and

customers. There is also a shortage of information about the behaviour of

intermediated customers (i.e. customers who do not have contact with the

manufacturer) and the perceptions that drive their behaviour. Since it was not possible

to speak to any intermediaries to get their views and those of their customers, this

must necessarily lead to a one-sided perspective of e-commerce development. It also

resulted in an exploration of possible strategic options for the manufacturer only.

There was very little consideration of customer and distributor alternatives, i.e. their

responses to manufacturer actions. In general, the lack of information was

problematic because it left a number of model assumptions that were less well

validated than they might have been.

A quantitative survey would have added to the study, and made it easier to quantify

some of the parameters, in particular those involved in the sensitivity analysis (i.e.

initial perceptions and the cohesiveness / density of the network). Collecting

information articulating the perspectives of the business partners would also allow

development of the critical theory approach, where conflicts and the power

relationships that structure interactions are more fully considered. The study had an

essentially singular perspective of employees at the company and so couldn’t capture

these aspects.

Since only a single case study was considered, that was centred upon one

manufacturer, the findings are not safely generalised to development of a pluralistic

perspective on the impact of e-commerce. The study has concentrated upon a specific

case involving empirical research that adds to knowledge about markets, the value

chain, and technology diffusion. To the question of whether the findings could be

generalised to other situations, the position taken here is that although similarities

were found with other empirical work (see chapter two) across different industrial

sectors, the case study itself is very specific.

The model developed as part of this case study, is relatively fine-grain and therefore

unlikely to be relevant to other cases. The flexibility of the agent-based approach,

however, allows the possibility for particular components of the model to be replaced.

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Though this would require a significant amount of work, in the long run suites of

models could be built that would allow a gradual establishment of more general

findings relevant to more than one situation. We return to the generalisation issue in

the following section (i.e. suggested further research).

However, this leaves us with another question: how successfully does the modelling

address the research hypotheses? This is a more general issue than that concerning the

substantive findings of the research, which was reviewed in the previous section.

Here, the interest is in how useful are the answers, and to what extent they are

limited? It should be noted that what can be inferred from the model results about the

target system, i.e. the policy implications of the model, is largely determined by the

level of confidence in the model. On the one hand, it was difficult to give policy

recommendations because lack of data with which to calibrate the model. On the

other hand, policy prescriptions such as encouraging adoption through various types

of intervention strategies and distributed communication amongst customers and

distributors, which were supported by the fieldwork analysis as well as by simulation

modelling, are reasonable ones to recommend to management.

The modelling is limited in the sense that it is not feasible to explore every possible

parameter setting but uncertainty must be dealt with through rigorous testing of the

results, repeated simulation, statistical analysis, and sensitivity analysis. However, the

model may be limited in other ways, not only upon how much trust can be placed in

the results.

It also was limited in that there were no conflicts apparent in the views of

stakeholders which could significantly complicate the research. In one sense it could

be considered fortunate that the stakeholders very closely shared views because it

made easier the task of formulating objectives suitable for a collaborative project. On

the other hand, conflicts amongst the stakeholders are interesting precisely because

they bring up issues which can be drawn into the model, by probing them, making

them explicit and understanding them through the model development process.

Negotiating upon conflicting views of the participants could therefore be a possible

use and benefit of the modelling as discussed earlier in section 8.3. An explanation

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for the lack of conflicts is that it was a result of having a very small group of

stakeholders, who possessed essentially unified views. However, with larger groups

of stakeholders, the likelihood is that different members hold different views, and

therefore there is a greater possibility of conflicts.

The ABSS methodology is not sufficiently developed to give guidance on how to

manage conflict issues, should they emerge, during the course of a participatory

project. It is an important question because it would, at least in part, indicate how the

method would scale up to projects involving lots of stakeholders. More attention

would need to be paid to conflicts and power relations amongst stakeholders, and the

relations between those individuals and the organisation. It would also be likely to

cause more confusion as to the project objectives (i.e. what are we going to study and

for what purpose – i.e. who is supposed to benefit?) and problem specification.

8.6 Reflection on the Areas Deserving Further Work

This chapter will now conclude with some suggestions for further research along

these lines of enquiry. Firstly, it has been argued that the research approach worked

reasonably well for a single case study and has proved worthy of trial for a bigger

study incorporating several cases and models of the impact of e-commerce upon the

value chain. Similarities exist across industry in the way business-to-business e-

commerce is organised. It would be worthwhile to explore how case alignment might

be carried out when several (similar) studies exist, and therefore the opportunity

exists for making comparisons and generalisations across these findings.

Secondly, it would be valuable to undertake a study incorporating ABSS modelling of

multiple perspectives of the value chain. There are several market-types that a

company may choose to enter: intermediary controlled and buyer controlled as well

as those initiated by themselves. Investigating the strategies of other members of the

value chain would allow us to develop further insights into the issues associated with

the introduction of EC and its impact upon the value chain.

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Thirdly, further research should aim to demonstrate the utility of the ABSS approach

in developing multi-agent software systems using sociological principles. These

principles encapsulate the flexible, robust, scalable, distributed and adaptive qualities

that we consider important for systems that are required to operate in complex

business environments. Finally, it is clear that new tools for improving visualisation

of simulation data would greatly enhance the ability of industrial collaborators to

interpret the meaning of simulation results and recognise behavioural patterns. These

tools would also undoubtedly have a positive impact on the feedback process between

industrial participants and research team.

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Conclusion

The original aspect of the work presented here was to combine qualitative with

quantitative insights in the development of an ABSS model. The qualitative approach

is encapsulated by the data collected through interviews, and the quantitative by sales

and other data. The key problem is to relate the quantitative to the qualitative, and

vice versa, i.e. to translate the qualitative data into a form suitable to apply the formal

methods of computer modelling, and likewise to interpret numerical outputs of

simulation experiments in terms of qualitative descriptions of modelled phenomena.

This is an important point, because stakeholder participation requires developing

explanations of model behaviour to which the stakeholders can understand and

discuss. As discussed in chapter six, the participatory approach was central to the

research although it produced problems in obtaining data that stakeholders had

initially agreed to provide, in completing the model evaluation process, and in an

eventual abrupt ending to the project. All of these problems were linked with the

literature on ethnographic research settings, namely the issues of ‘sponsorship’,

‘ongoing access relations’, and ‘models of the researcher’.

The lack of information was particularly problematic for model development because

the assumptions were less well validated than they might have been. Similarly to

SSM and BPM approaches to participatory inquiry, ABSS modelling is a process

which forces disambiguation amongst stakeholders in specifying a ‘conceptual

model’ of the system under investigation, and the (often hidden) assumptions that

constitute it.

In addition to simulating the consequences of managers’ decision-making and other

scenarios involving dynamic processes, a main strength of the approach would be this

disambiguation of the specification of a problem area. In the course of doing this,

necessarily the researcher will elicit stakeholders’ subjective positions. It must be

recognised then, that the model is not an objective one but, on the contrary, contains a

number of subjective interpretations. Nevertheless, the view of the author is that it is

possible to claim objectivity on the grounds that there are common ‘threads’ running

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through the dialogue, and that this type of objectivity may be a desirable ontological

position to aim for in the face of stakeholders conflicting worldviews and

subjectivity.