The Impact of E-Procurement on the Number of Suppliers: Where to Move to?

This paper examines how electronic procurement influences the organization of economic transactions. It seeks evidence for ICT-induced changes in how companies organize their activities and whether ICT lead to more competitive and transparent markets. Testing the relationship between the effect of electronic procurement on procurement cost and sourcing strategy, I provide new evidence that electronic procurement leads to more market transactions. This leads to the conclusion that electronic procurement increases market transparency, lowers search and supplier switching costs and improves the management of supply chain and contradicts the predictions that ICT will lead to a dominance of network-like organizational form and an increasing reliance on hybrid forms of organizing economic transactions. Two implications emerge from these results. The first one is relevant for companies engaging in ICT projects. ICT combined with changes in business strategy leads to a reduction of market transaction costs and, as a result, opens up new possibilities in terms of how business activities can be organized and/or how to structure competition in upstream markets. This effect of new technologies is of clear benefit to companies successfully implementing and using new technologies. The second implication is of great importance for companies whose customers implement ICT to intensify competition among suppliers. Changing environment forces them to adapt to new market conditions and look for new ways of maintaining profitability.information technology and firm boundaries, markets vs. hierarchies, sourcing strategy, electronic procurement

Deriving a taxonomy of its transition costs

Those charged with implementing information technology often face the daunting task of assessing the total organizational costs of such initiatives. Our study posits evaluating such expenditures as IT transition costs - organizational resource expenditures stemming from a positive IT investment decision. A content analytic review of academic, IT-related articles yielded 57 cases germane to the construct. Data produced a meaningful and comprehensive taxonomy that distinguished IT transition costs by two dimensions: goal (prescriptive, evaluative, adaptive, corrective) and target (human, structure, process, technology). The significance of the taxonomy as a useful guide to both practitioners and future research is discussed

CORPORATE ECOLOGICAL RESPONSIVENESS, ENVIRONMENTAL AMBIDEXTERITY AND IT-ENABLED ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

An increased focus on creating a sustainable society has thrust environmental sustainability issues to societal and governmental forefront. Organizations can seize this opportunity to use environmental sustainability initiatives to set themselves apart from competitors. Achieving sustainability requires organizations to incorporate sustainability as part of their corporate strategy. A review of extant Information Systems (IS) literature on environmental sustainability revealed that the strategic role of Information Technology (IT) in enabling environmental sustainability strategy is one perspective that has not been explored in depth. Our paper addresses this gap in research. In this research paper, we propose that firms that use IT strategically to enable their environmental sustainability strategies and are able to demonstrate environmental ambidexterity are set to achieve competitive advantage, legitimacy, and reputation from their corporate ecological responsiveness initiatives. We present preliminary results from interviews that were part of our in-depth case study approach