Electronic Marketplaces: A Cross-Industry Comparison

This research addresses the question of the potential growth of electronic marketplaces as an e-entrepreneurship model. We will examine how electronic marketplaces are different among industry sectors from two major perspectives: the level of electronic marketplace usage and the level of e-readiness.  The results of an empirical study conducted in the United States show that a wide range of industry sectors are currently prepared to use electronic marketplaces, and will use them in the future. These findings indicate a better chance for the growth of e-entrepreneurship as a solution for entrepreneurs in our current troubled economy

The Knowledge Application and Utilization Framework Applied to Defense COTS: A Research Synthesis for Outsourced Innovation

Purpose -- Militaries of developing nations face increasing budget pressures, high operations tempo, a blitzing pace of technology, and adversaries that often meet or beat government capabilities using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies. The adoption of COTS products into defense acquisitions has been offered to help meet these challenges by essentially outsourcing new product development and innovation. This research summarizes extant research to develop a framework for managing the innovative and knowledge flows. Design/Methodology/Approach – A literature review of 62 sources was conducted with the objectives of identifying antecedents (barriers and facilitators) and consequences of COTS adoption. Findings – The DoD COTS literature predominantly consists of industry case studies, and there’s a strong need for further academically rigorous study. Extant rigorous research implicates the importance of the role of knowledge management to government innovative thinking that relies heavily on commercial suppliers. Research Limitations/Implications – Extant academically rigorous studies tend to depend on measures derived from work in information systems research, relying on user satisfaction as the outcome. Our findings indicate that user satisfaction has no relationship to COTS success; technically complex governmental purchases may be too distant from users or may have socio-economic goals that supersede user satisfaction. The knowledge acquisition and utilization framework worked well to explain the innovative process in COTS. Practical Implications – Where past research in the commercial context found technological knowledge to outweigh market knowledge in terms of importance, our research found the opposite. Managers either in government or marketing to government should be aware of the importance of market knowledge for defense COTS innovation, especially for commercial companies that work as system integrators. Originality/Value – From the literature emerged a framework of COTS product usage and a scale to measure COTS product appropriateness that should help to guide COTS product adoption decisions and to help manage COTS product implementations ex post

Methodology proposal for budgeting process on manufacturing and logistics organisation

Based on an analysis of the most relevant literature on the topic, and on the solutions proposed by academics or the ones other organisations are implementing, different planning models to better understand the budgeting process, the common difficulties encountered, and the solutions proposed by different agents. As such, this study explores the better budgeting and the beyond budgeting models, as well as the tools these models propose, namely, Activity Based Budgeting, Zero-based budgeting, Rolling Budgeting and External Benchmarking. Having worked on the organisation for more than five years as manager and having a deep knowledge of the used budgeting process the focus was on understanding the difficulties on the budgeting process, the existing proved methods, and tools, and see how they fit on the organisation to propose them as solution. Several of the difficulties and problems mentioned on the literature were identified on the organization’s process and following the author’s view on how to overcome them, actions were proposed though the change of behaviours following the method’s principles or by using the tools available on the mentioned methods.Baseado numa análise da literatura mais relevante sobre o tema, nas soluções propostas por académicos ou nas implementadas por outras organizações, nos diferentes modelos de planeamento para melhor entender o processo de orçamentação, as dificuldades mais comuns e as soluções apresentadas pelos diferentes agentes. Dessa forma, este estudo explora os modelos “better budgeting” e “beyond budgeting”, assim como as ferramentas propostas por estes, nomeadamente, “Activity Based Busgeting”, “Zero-based budgeting”, “Rolling Budgeting” e “External Benchmarking”. Tendo trabalhado na organização por mais de 5 anos em funções de gestão de departamento e tendo um conhecimento profundo do processo de orçamentação utilizado, o foco deste trabalho ficou no entendimento das dificuldades do processo de orçamentação, os métodos e ferramentas comprovados, verificar como estes se encaixam na organização e propô-los como solução. Várias das dificuldades e problemas referenciados na literatura foram identificados no processo da organização e, seguindo o entendimento dos autores em como ultrapassá-los, foram propostas acções através de alterações comportamentais seguindo os princípios identificados nos métodos ou pelo uso das ferramentas disponíveis nos métodos mencionados

To Greener Pastures: An Action Research Study on the Environmental Sustainability of Humanitarian Supply Chains

Purpose: While humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) inherently contribute to social sustainability by alleviating the suffering of afflicted communities, their unintended adverse environmental impact has been overlooked hitherto. This paper draws upon contingency theory to synthesize green practices for HSCs, identify the contingency factors that impact on greening HSCs and explore how focal humanitarian organizations (HOs) can cope with such contingency factors. Design/methodology/approach: Deploying an action research methodology, two-and-a-half cycles of collaboration between researchers and a United Nations agency were completed. The first half-cycle developed a deductive greening framework, synthesizing extant green practices from the literature. In the second and third cycles, green practices were adopted/customized/developed reflecting organizational and contextual contingency factors. Action steps were implemented in the HSC for prophylactics, involving an operational mix of disaster relief and development programs. Findings: First, the study presents a greening framework that synthesizes extant green practices in a suitable form for HOs. Second, it identifies the contingency factors associated with greening HSCs regarding funding environment, stakeholders, field of activity and organizational management. Third, it outlines the mechanisms for coping with the contingency factors identified, inter alia, improving the visibility of headquarters over field operations, promoting collaboration and resource sharing with other HOs as well as among different implementing partners in each country, and working with suppliers for greener packaging. The study advances a set of actionable propositions for greening HSCs. Practical implications: Using an action research methodology, the study makes strong practical contributions. Humanitarian practitioners can adopt the greening framework and the lessons learnt from the implementation cycles presented in this study. Originality/value: This is one of the first empirical studies to integrate environmental sustainability and HSCs using an action research methodology

An application of Fuzzy DEMATEL electronic life-insurance development

For years, e-commerce has generated competitive advantage for many industries especially in insurance industry where people could apply for any sort of insurance, very easily. In fact, insurance industry has become one of the most important sectors in the world. E-commerce, on the other hand, has absorbed various people in insurance industry to develop economic growth. However, applying e-commerce for insurance firms may encounter serious obstacles and it is important to know them properly and setup appropriate actions to remove them. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique based on DEMATEL with an adaptation of fuzzy logic to find important factors impacting implementation of e-commerce for life insurance industry. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some insurance experts and then we analyze them using fuzzy DEMATEL technique. Findings indicate that “lack of designing death table based on the existing statistics of population death in Iran”, “lack of variety in protections of life insurance in proportionate to society individual’s requirements by means of low level income of society individuals” and “lack of extensive advertisements for developing the culture of life insurance in country” are the most important factors influencing insurance industry for enhancing e-business

Value Co-creation Inside the Ridesharing Economy: Evidence from the Chinese Sharing Economy Experiencescape with Set-theoretic and SEM Applications

The study empirically examines value co-creative behaviors within the framework of ridesharing, complexity theory, and fsQCA. A total of 301, questionnaires were acquired through social media and conventional sources in the study. The questionnaires were analysed to validate our proposed hypotheses by using structural equation modelling (SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), ostensibly to assess the direct (indirect) relationships, and all feasible solutions that defined Equifinality respectively. The SEM results of the study revealed that resources and experiential consumption remain the corner stone of distinct value formation; and the antecedents of commuters’ high intention to participate in ridesharing value co-creation. Furthermore, among the dimensions of experiential consumption, escapism was found to be the most influential contributor of commuters’ high intention to participate in ridesharing value co-creation. In terms of fsQCA, the results revealed seven (7) recipes of configurations (solutions) for predicting commuters’ high intention to participate in ridesharing value co-creation. Arguably, there is a chasm in literature with respect to ridesharing value co-creation. Whiles the study intends to address this chasm, the implications of the study will enhance managerial decision-making on how to combine their scarce resources to design memorable and authentic-laden services that will attract the commuting public for value co-creation. The study narrows the chasm and further deepens the stream of literature on sharing economy through its theoretical provision, and unique focus on value co-creation in the ambit of ridesharing. Keywords: Value co-creation/destruction, fsQCA, sharing economy, experience economy, memorable experience. S-D logic, complexity theory

The role of e-procurement in purchasing management

This exposition summarises research published in several academic articles, in order to meet the requirements of PhD by publication. The focus of the work is on the role of electronic procurement in management of the purchasing function. From the late 1990s a number of independent e-procurement mechanisms were launched which offered potential benefits such as increased order accuracy, transaction efficiency and greater integration between trading partners. At the outset of this programme of research, e-procurement was therefore an emerging phenomenon with little academic research and presented an opportunity to investigate a largely unexplored area. Edmondson and McManus (2007) suggest that for nascent, as opposed to mature areas of research, where few formal constructs or measures exist, an exploratory, qualitative approach is required. This research followed such an approach through the use of case studies, involving observation, participation and interviews with key organisational actors. Each paper makes use of several cases in order to compare and contrast results from different organisations and to draw conclusions from multi-case analysis. The published articles focus on the impact of core applications within e-procurement, including online reverse auctions, electronic marketplaces, online catalogue sites, and buying systems covering the ‘requisition to pay’ cycle. The findings from the papers address a number of core themes in purchasing management. In considering buyer-supplier relationships, it was observed that such dyads are driven by traditional buyer negotiation factors such as segmentation, power and price and that use of eprocurement applications tended to enforce such traditional behaviours. In relation to the potential for integration, the study found that integration between firms was barely affected, as the concept of integration was neither an objective nor a business case driver for e-procurement adoption. This situation reflects the finding that procurement managers pursue functional targets rather than supply chain-level objectives. However, other significant effects from e-procurement adoption were noted such as the tendency by buyers to reduce supplier numbers and a move to re-engineer the procurement function in buying firms, through automating transactional processes. The research finds that e-procurement does not have a deterministic impact on purchasing management, and that it acts as an enabler to more effective management of the function though the way its different mechanisms are deployed. The exposition establishes that e-procurement is used in relation to supply conditions which are characterised by both ‘markets’ and ‘hierarchies’, but that it is the predefined purchasing strategy of the firm, rather than available technology solutions, which determines when markets and hierarchies are used. Additionally, an original model is introduced, focusing on developing an e-procurement policy which can support strategic purchasing goals. This model extrapolates findings from stages in the research, and marries together elements from various papers and frameworks therein, to produce some guidelines for adoption of this technology

The influence of relational competencies on supply chain resilience : a relational view

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the resilience domain, which is important in the field of supply chain management; it investigates the effects relational competencies have for resilience and the effect resilience, in turn, has on a supply chain’s customer value. Design/methodology/approach – The research is empirical in nature and employs a confirmatory approach that builds on the relational view as a primary theoretical foundation. It utilizes survey data collected from manufacturing firms from three countries, which is analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings – It is found that communicative and cooperative relationships have a positive effect on resilience, while integration does not have a significant effect. It is also found that improved resilience, obtained by investing in agility and robustness, enhances a supply chain’s customer value. Practical implications – Some findings contrast the expectations derived from theory. Particularly, practitioners can learn that integration has a limited role in enhancing resilience. Originality/value – The study distinguishes between a proactive and reactive dimension of resilience: robustness and agility. The relational view serves as the theoretical basis to explain the effects between three types of relational competencies (communication, cooperation, and integration) and the above-mentioned two dimensions of resilience. Keywords Relational competencies, Supply chain management, Risk management, Supply chain resilience, Supply chain agility, Supply chain robustnes