Enhancing business performance in an electronic commerce setting: An empirical study

Electronic commerce is creating opportunities to rethink business models, processes and relationships along the entire length of the supply chain in pursuit of unprecedented levels of productivity, improved customer propositions and new streams of businesses. Most corporate executives are convinced that the scale and pervasiveness of today's electronic commerce require a fundamental review of business strategy. Operations management researchers also call for substantiating operations strategy research to an electronic commerce environment. However, no empirical research has been found to explore electronic commerce strategic issues using the operations strategy theory.; Drawing on both operations strategy and information systems strategy literature, this research proposed a conceptual framework integrating both operations strategy and information systems strategy models, and then applied the proposed framework to an electronic commerce setting. This research not only provides a conceptual framework to systematically explore electronic commerce strategic issues, but also provides empirical evidence on the relationships between various constructs.; There were several major findings in this research. The first major finding was that operations strategy researchers should build into virtually all research design explicit considerations regarding environment factors. The business environment appeared to have a tangible impact on strategic choices in operations. It also appeared that a link between the business environment and operations strategy helped determine business performance. The second major finding of this research was that the information systems strategic orientation should be considered in conducting operations strategy research in an electronic commerce environment. An information systems strategic orientation appeared to have a direct support in implementing various operations strategy dimensions. It also appeared that an alignment between the information systems strategic orientation and operations strategy influenced business performance. The third major finding suggested that both the business environment and information systems strategic orientation appeared to have direct impact on operations strategy simultaneously. It also appeared that an alignment among the business environment, the information systems strategic orientation, and operations strategy helped determine business performance.