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Avocados crossing borders: the missing common information infrastructure for international trade

Published: 20 August 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper address indirect global interactions that involve collaboration across continents involving different cultures, languages, technologies and nations. Specifically, we are concerned with analyzing international trade of avocados from trees in Africa to grocery store shelves in the European Union. The methodology of the paper is a revelatory case study of a particular trade lane from Kenya to The Netherlands. Drawing on Activity Theory Framework and theories on Information Infrastructures, we provide an analysis of the complex inter-organizational systems and infrastructures involved in the selected case of international trade, identify critical issues in information flows, and propose ideas for design principles for a new information infrastructures for international trade. Our analysis shows that the existing infrastructure can be described as very fragmented and grossly ineffective. Our findings indicate that the implementation of a common integrated information infrastructure could significantly contribute to reducing costs especially by speeding up processes, by providing transparency in the flow and reducing the lead time for international trade of fruit and vegetables. Further, the description format developed for this case can be useful for visualizing and analyzing other supply chains involving collaborations across borders.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CABS '14: Proceedings of the 5th ACM international conference on Collaboration across boundaries: culture, distance & technology
August 2014
154 pages
ISBN:9781450325578
DOI:10.1145/2631488
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 20 August 2014

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Author Tags

  1. activity theory
  2. information infrastructure
  3. international trade

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CABS '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 13 of 24 submissions, 54%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 13 of 24 submissions, 54%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Approach for Decentralized Information Systems in Maritime LogisticsDynamics in Logistics10.1007/978-3-031-56826-8_11(147-159)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2024
  • (2023)GÜMRÜK VERGİLERİNDE BLOCKCHAIN TEKNOLOJİSİNİN KULLANILMASIEkonomi Maliye İşletme Dergisi10.46737/emid.12128416:2(100-111)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2023
  • (2023)An Extensive Preliminary Blockchain Survey from a Maritime PerspectiveSmart Cities10.3390/smartcities60200416:2(846-877)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2023
  • (2022)Collaboration and Data Sharing in Inter-Organizational Infrastructure Construction ProjectsSustainability10.3390/su14241683514:24(16835)Online publication date: 15-Dec-2022
  • (2022)Blockchain Potentials in the Maritime Sector: A SurveyProceedings of the ICR’22 International Conference on Innovations in Computing Research10.1007/978-3-031-14054-9_28(293-309)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2022
  • (2021)Mitigating sustainability tradeoffs as global fruit and vegetable systems expand to meet dietary recommendationsEnvironmental Research Letters10.1088/1748-9326/abe25a16:5(055010)Online publication date: 4-May-2021
  • (2020)The Significance of Blockchain Technology in Digital Transformation of Logistics and TransportationInternational Journal of E-Services and Mobile Applications10.4018/IJESMA.202001010112:1(1-20)Online publication date: Jan-2020
  • (2019)Design of a software architecture supporting business-to-government information sharing to improve public safety and securityJournal of Intelligent Information Systems10.1007/s10844-017-0478-z52:3(595-618)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
  • (2018)How Blockchain Could Be Implemented for Exchanging Documentation in the Shipping IndustryDynamics in Logistics10.1007/978-3-319-74225-0_27(194-198)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2018
  • (2017)Avocados crossing borders: The problem of runaway objects and the solution of a shipping information pipeline for improving international tradeInformation Systems Journal10.1111/isj.1214628:2(408-438)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2017
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