Explaining Cybermediation: An Organizational Analysis of Electronic Retailing
本文超越交易成本经济学，运用消费者经济学及组织科学理论（如制度理论、社会交换理论等）解释电子零售中网络中介的兴起，对研究电子商务中介现象的学者有参考价值。
One of the most common early forecasts for commerce in the information age was the removal of wholesalers, distributors, and other intermediaries in a firm's value chain. This "disintermediation" offered the prospect of greater efficiency in supply and marketing channels. More recent evidence suggests that such forecasts were shortsighted, and today new "cybermediaries" have lodged themselves in the value chain between goods manufacturers and customers. This paper explains the phenomenon of cybermediation by looking beyond transaction cost economics toward newer theories of consumer economics and several theories drawn from the organization sciences: institutional theory, social exchange theory, social network theory, and theories of organizational knowledge creation. By acknowledging the potential contributions of these diverse theoretical perspectives, researchers may gain greater leverage in their attempts to explain the emergence of cybermediaries in electronic commerce. Key Words:...