How to Ensure Collective Action in Multinational Projects: Insights from the EurHisFirm Project

This chapter analyzes a central part of an EU-funded, seven-nations development project for the comprehensive interdisciplinary design of a European system to collect and collate historical financial and firm data (named EurHisFirm)—the responsibility of the authors was the design of a Common Data Model (CDM). Against the background that successful information systems are of the type “sociotechnical systems” between human applicants and information technology—mutually driving each other but likewise also depending on the input of the respective opposite side—we have strong indications that in complex decision situations human cooperation deficiencies substantially outweigh expectable exponential advancements of the information technology. The reason is presumably that amongst diverse and self-confident nations—actually persons—(likewise in important sub-national groups of responsibility, e.g., communal authorities or firms) reaching an agreement on data and other standards is an overly lengthy process that often ends with foul compromises. We understand our contribution to bundle substantial indications toward a possible enhancement of the state-of-the-art—however, fellow researchers should thoroughly investigate the approach.