Intraorganizational power and the adoption of interorganisational IT innovations: The inside story of Covisint

The failure of Covisint to establish a standardised e-commerce platform for the automotive industry has been widely documented in the literature. Generally, its failure is explained based on the external dynamics of conflicts between industry actors. Based on an in-depth ethnographic case study, this paper uncovers the inside story of Covisint, looking at the distribution of power within the organisational actors involved in the development and adoption of Covisint. The study finds that the adoption of Covisint has altered the power distribution not only at the level of the industry, but also within the adopting organisations themselves. The introduction of a new e-commerce platform to mediate supplier relationships threatens the position of various organisational departments. Power struggles result in significant compromises over the original objectives of the platform, ultimately leading to localised adaptations of what was envisaged to be a global standardised e-commerce platform.