A Research Of Business Value Creation Of IT In The Agility Oriented Electronic Supply Chain

The rapid development of the Internet and information technology (IT) has extended the application of web-based B2B electronic business (e-business) from the transactions within a single organization to various inter-organizational business activities along supply chains. In the last few years we have witnessed restructuring of industries and firms in search of new inter-organizational business models to compete in the electronic supply chain that is taking shape. Now, the competition among enterprises in the 21st century should be determined by supply chain, so how to construct agility oriented electronic supply chain (e-SC) to realize information sharing and cooperation became the critical issue to win the competition. Interfirm IS integration, organizational resources sharing, process integration, partner alignment, as well as mutual trust between partners can be blended with interfirm business processes to develop e-SC. While most of firms are now focusing on IT investment, lacking of correspondent managerial efforts in coordination and control process, these firms cannot gain IT business value through high level of e-SC collaborative capabilities.Previous research has demonstrated the relationship between IT related resources and the IT business value realized in e-SC applications. However, researchers still don't know how and when companies with different interfirm technical and other organizational resources can be integrated in co-creation of IT business value. With increasingly applications of interfirm information systems from single to multi-organizations, the creation process of business value of IT affected by technical resources and partnership expansion, as well as the interfirm relational assets. In addition, in an agility-oriented SC, extant research has not investigated how agility orientation influences the creation of the business value of IT.This study reviews the literature regarding the business value of IT in e-SC, and summarizes the theoretical foundations, research findings and their limitations in the information systems and operation management studies. Based on the strategic management theory and the relational view, this study analyzes the mechanim through which organizations realize the business value of IT in e-SC. Specifically, the main purposes of this study are twofold. One purpose is to examine the mechanism of realizing the business value of IT in e-SC by considering the contingency effect of suppliers' and retailers' agility on the relationship between interfirm resource integration and e-SC collaborative capabilities. Secondly, this study aims to investigate the evolutional causal relationship linkage from e-SC collaborative capabilities, operational process performance, to network collaborative performance from perspective of the configuration theory.Data was collected from a survey of companies with e-SC applications. The hypotheses were examined using a mediated-moderation PLS (Partial Least Square) structural equation modeling, cluster, and regression analysis. The result from 196 companies suggests the following findings:1. The result suggests a two-stage model in which organizations realize the business value of IT in e-SC. Specifically, value creation mechanisms take the form of (1) IS technological effect, (2) relational effect from mutual trust, (3) contingent and direct effect from agility, and (4) business value of IT realized through e-SC collaborative capability. These mechanisms collectively realize IT business value in e-SC through two stages. In the first stage, firms integrate the interfirm IT resources and develop mutual trust in order to develop e-SC collaborative capabilities with their partners in the supply chain. In this stage, agility has contingent and direct effect on the integration of interfirm organizational resources. The second stage represents the positive relationship between e-SC collaborative capability and operational process performance, which in turn affects network collaborative performance.2. From a contingency perspective, this study finds that there exist both direct and moderation effects of agility on the relationship between interfirm organizational resources and e-SC collaborative capability. The direct effect of agility substitutes the effect of partners'mutual trust to achieve super e-SC collaborative capability. The moderation effect of agility is only valid for retailers and not for suppliers. Indeed, retailers'agility has a positive moderation effect on IS integration but negative moderation effects on IT managerial skills.3. From a configuration perspective, this study finds three e-SC patterns of agility, which determined by low response, low agility and high agility model. The fit between retailers' agility and suppliers'agility represents double high vs double low of agility. With the continuous improvement of e-SC agility, this research supports the U-sharped influence of mediation path between e-SC collaborative capabilitiy and network collaborative performance, while innovation diffusion curved shape influence in the direct path.In this study, the combination analysis of phase and mechanism shows good support to explain how to realize the business value of IT in e-SC. The substitution effect for partners'mutual trust and the contingenct coupling between IS integration and IT managerial skills expand current knowledge in agility oriented e-SC collaboration. These findings contribute to the IS and operations management literature on e-SC IT business value creation in the agility-oritened supply chain management, and offer managers a framework for unstanding the e-SC IT business value from both interfirm organizational resources and e-SC IT value-driven viewpoint. More specifically, this approach will help managers understand how organization deploys interfirm technology and organizational resources and agility e-SC collaboration so that successful e-SC practices can be achieved.