Malone's contention that hierarchies would face more challenges even as real-time integration and databases entered what he saw as the highest level of evolution, Shared Databases, he didn't predict how integration would affect transaction velocity and the corresponding need for distributed order management systems to become the critical link between hierarchy and market structures. Critique of Malone Article

In defining the shift of hierarchies towards markets, Malone does not go the entire distance of a value chain and analyze the ramifications of real-time integration changing selling and service arrangements. Malone's analysis discusses efficiencies from a myopic perspective; he hasn't opened up the aperture of his analysis to consider how hierarchies and markets can be synchronized to deliver a more personalized, responsive, highly tailored, and very profitable experience to the customer. There are many examples of companies who have gone this last mile so to speak and looked at their value chain with the customer involved. Wal-Mart, UPS, Dell Computer, General Electric, and other companies how have world-class supply chains didn't stop where Malone did with an analysis of integrations' effect on data sharing. These companies moved past the inward-facing...

Malone completely misses this point.
Adjunct to this point is the fact that his maturity model of integration is flawed; where is the time component? I'd suggest Malone re-think his stages in the evolution of electronic markets to include not just the speed and alacrity that the Internet has brought in terms of creating integrations of databases, but take it a step further and analyze how the velocity of transactions in effect must flatten the hybrid organization of hierarchy and market value chains to ensure companies become truly driven by demand first, their own internal metrics of performance later.

References

Columbus (2001) - Integrating E-Commerce into Exchanges: Risks and Rewards April 6, 2001. Sam's Publishing Company. Accessed from the Internet on January 12, 2007 at http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=21094&rl=1

Malone (1987) - Electronic Markets and Electronic Hierarchies. Thomas Malone, Joanne Yates, and Robert L. Benjamin. Communications of the ACM. June 1987. Volume 30. Number 6.