Management middleware for integrating decentralized heterogeneous corporations

One of the major current business trends is gaining market power by mergers and acquisitions and by selling of those business limits which are considered inefficient or which no longer represent core competencies. The goal of our paper is to conceptualize an IS architecture which on the one hand enables a speedy integration of decentralized and heterogeneous business units and on the other hand facilitates their selling off. Such a "Management Middleware" is developed basing on the dataware house concept. The core of the Management Middleware is an information pool in which specific decision relevant information of the entire corporation are stored. In contrast to a data warehouse, the information pool is not a read-only data store, but a read-write information junction which allows for information input by decentralized units and, at the same time, allows the access to information stored by headquarters or other limits. Only a two way information center supports the creation of management information and at the same time enables a decentralized, but integrated decision-making and corporate management. The decentralized business units own data marts which contain specific decision relevant information adapted to their individual decision problems.