Many previous studies have indicated various types of Key Success Factors (KSFs) of corporate alliances, however, all the studies argue from a comprehensive point of view and do not analyze the KSFs according to differing corporate alliance models. Thus, in our study, we look at the KSFs from four perspectives: objective, competition, type of business and scale of partner. Evidence for this is based on results from questionnaires and case studies to R&D-based venture companies.

Depending on the complexity of objective systems, we must consider many evaluation attributes for rational decision-making. Many researches about Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) were studied for evaluation of complex systems, e.g., identification of multi-attribute utility function, or decision criteria, etc. But most of MADM researches assume a set of evaluation attributes for the decision-making, and the following problems have occurred.

1. Selected evaluation attributes are important for MADM, but how to get a set of appropriate evaluation attributes is not clear.

2. Pair-wise comparison is usually used to determine empirical preference relations of the decision-makers, e.g., AHP, utility theory, etc. However, the preference relations may not satisfy the properties of ordered relations or consistency.

In order to solve the above problems, we present a conceptual framework for the representation of complex and inconsistent preference relations. We introduce a concept of evaluation structure and propose algorithms for the construction of evaluation structure in order to represent complex and inconsistent preference relations.

Silent members on electronic mailing lists and bulletin boards (ROMs: read only members), that are considered mere receivers of information, are in fact quite active actors in disseminating information from the electronic media to the outside. 37% of ROMs, who tend to be users of the media primarily fbr information gathering purposes, passes the information to the outside world. Such transmission to the outside world tends to happen face-to-face and on personal bases. This paper discusses not only the results of but also methodological issues in researching ROMs.

There are growing concerns for the interpretive research of information systems. The research results, however, are primarily for researchers. There are no effective devices aimed at the understanding of IS practitioners. We show the needs for the diagrammatic expression for complementing the research efforts usually presented only in a textual form, and build a diagrammatic expression based on social theories. A simple example is shown.