We explore the theoretical foundations of value creation in e-business by examining how 59 American and European e-businesses that have recently become publicly traded corporations create value. We observe that in e-business new value can be created by the ways in which transactions are enabled. Grounded in the rich data obtained from case study analyses and in the received theory in entrepreneurship and strategic management, we develop a model of the sources of value creation. The model suggests that the value creation potential of e-businesses hinges on four interdependent dimensions, namely: efficiency, complementarities, lock-in, and novelty. Our findings suggest that no single entrepreneurship or strategic management theory can fully explain the value creation potential of e-business. Rather, an integration of the received theoretical perspectives on value creation is needed. To enable such an integration, we offer the business model construct as a unit of analysis for future research on value creation in e-business. A business model depicts the design of transaction content, structure, and governance so as to create value through the exploitation of business opportunities. We propose that a firm's business model is an important locus of innovation and a crucial source of value creation for the firm and its suppliers, partners, and customers. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

https://uazuay.edu.ec/bibliotecas/e-business/Value_Creation_in_E-Business.pdf

Value creation in E-business

Agility is vital to the innovation and competitive performance of firms in contemporary business environments. Firms are increasingly relying on information technologies, including process, knowledge, and communication technologies, to enhance their agility. The purpose of this paper is to broaden understanding about the strategic role of IT by examining the nomological network of influences through which IT impacts firm performance. By drawing upon recent thinking in the strategy, entrepreneurship, and IT management literatures, this paper uses a multitheoretic lens to argue that information technology investments and capabilities influence firm performance through three significant organizational capabilities (agility, digital options, and entrepreneurial alertness) and strategic processes (capability-building, entrepreneurial action, and coevolutionary adaptation). We also propose that these dynamic capabilities and strategic processes impact the ability of firms to launch many and varied competitive actions and that, in turn, these competitive actions are a significant antecedent of firm performance. Through our theorizing, we draw attention to a significant and reframed role of IT as a digital options generator in contemporary firms.

/pdf/shaping-agility-through-digital-options-reconceptualizing-ls4ufpmoi1.pdf

Shaping agility through digital options: reconceptualizing the role of information technology in contemporary firms

Self-service technologies (SSTs) are increasingly changing the way customers interact with firms to create service outcomes. Given that the emphasis in the academic literature has focused almost exclusively on the interpersonal dynamics of service encounters, there is much to be learned about customer interactions with technology-based self-service delivery options. In this research, the authors describe the results of a critical incident study based on more than 800 incidents involving SSTs solicited from customers through a Web-based survey. The authors categorize these incidents to discern the sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with SSTs. The authors present a discussion of the resulting critical incident categories and their relationship to customer attributions, complaining behavior, word of mouth, and repeat purchase intentions, which is followed by implications for managers and researchers.

/pdf/self-service-technologies-understanding-customer-35kd0svba9.pdf

Self-Service Technologies: Understanding Customer Satisfaction with Technology-Based Service Encounters

Best practice exemplars suggest that digital platforms play a critical role in managing supply chain activities and partnerships that generate performance gains for firms. However, there is limited academic investigation on how and why information technology can create performance gains for firms in a supply chain management (SCM) context. Grant's (1996) theoretical notion of higher-order capabilities and a hierarchy of capabilities has been used in recent information systems research by Barua et al. (2004), Sambamurthy et al. (2003), and Mithas et al. (2004) to reframe the conversation from the direct performance impacts of IT resources and investments to how and why IT shapes higher-order process capabilities that create performance gains for firms. We draw on the emerging IT-enabled organizational capabilities perspective to suggest that firms that develop IT infrastructure integration for SCM and leverage it to create a higher-order supply chain integration capability generate significant and sustainable performance gains. A research model is developed to investigate the hierarchy of IT-related capabilities and their impact on firm performance. Data were collected from 110 supply chain and logistics managers in manufacturing and retail organizations. Our results suggest that integrated IT infrastructures enable firms to develop the higher-order capability of supply chain process integration. This capability enables firms to unbundle information flows from physical flows, and to share information with their supply chain partners to create information-based approaches for superior demand planning, for the staging and movement of physical products, and for streamlining voluminous and complex financial work processes. Furthermore, IT-enabled supply chain integration capability results in significant and sustained firm performance gains, especially in operational excellence and revenue growth. Managerial initiatives should be directed at developing an integrated IT infrastructure and leveraging it to create process capabilities for the integration of resource flows between a firm and its supply chain partners.

/pdf/firm-performance-impacts-of-digitally-enabled-supply-chain-105a41w5s6.pdf

Firm performance impacts of digitally enabled supply chain integration capabilities

The technology acceptance model (Davis 1989) is one of the most widely used models of IT adoption. According to TAM, IT adoption is influenced by two perceptions: usefulness and ease-of-use. Research has shown that perceived usefulness (PU) affects intended adoption of IT, but has mostly failed to do so regarding perceived ease of use (PEOU). The basic proposition of this study is that this varying importance of PEOU may be related to the nature of the task. PEOU relates to assessments of the intrinsic characteristics of IT, such as the ease of use, ease of learning, flexibility, and clarity of its interface. PU, on the other hand, is a response to user assessment of its extrinsic, i.e., task-oriented, outcomes: how IT

The Relative Importance of Perceived Ease of Use in IS Adoption: A Study of E-Commerce Adoption

A few examples illustrate the distinction. When consumers use answering machines to store their phone messages, they are using objects made and sold in the physical world, but when they purchase electronic answering services from their local phone companies, they are utilizing the marketspace – a virtual realm where products and services exist as digital information and can be delivered through information-based channels. Banks provide services to customers at branch oƒfices in the marketplace as well as electronic online services to customers in the marketspace; airlines sell passenger tickets in both the “place” and the “space”; and fast-food outlets take orders over the counter at restaurants and increasingly through touch screens connected to computers.

John J. Sviokla

Papers

Exploiting the virtual value chain

Managing in the Marketspace