On the Behavioral Nature of Integration: Dynamic Interplay of Coordination Intensity and Integration Benefits

The contribution of the paper is threefold. First, it would contribute to established integration literature (based in the information processing and knowledge-based views) by unpacking and testing the relationship between integration effort, the level of achieved integration, and the realized benefits of integration. Second, the paper would represent a theoretical innovation in the sense that the study of integration is expanded with an individual dimension that is demonstrated to be crucial in order to properly understand, represent, and explain the relationship between integration effort and integration outcomes. Third, the paper represents a methodological advance, both in terms of the level of empirical detail and the implied challenge of the established tendency to use referent-shift consensus composition and similar aggregation methods.