E-supply Chain Strategy And Implementation Framework For Research

Inter-firm organizations evolve continuously from vertical integration throughtraditional supply chain to e-supply chain. The collaboration and transactionsbetween supply chain members change as the development of informationtechnology. E-supply chain may improve the efficiency of supply chains by highlyintegration, quick response, cost reduction, flexibility improvement and shorteningsupply chains.The formation of an e-supply chain is influenced by the trust between partners,transaction cost, and the resource controlled by supply chain members. Thevarious successful cases in practice imply that different companies should choosedifferent modes when developing their e-supply chains. This research studies theselection of e-supply chain mode from two dimensions: market fragment andproduct complexity. The combination of different levels of market fragment andproduct complexity leads to four modes of e-supply chain: e-seller, e-purchaser,e-market, and e-integrator.Similarly, firms need to design the implementation framework for their e-supplychain system according to the requirements and their resources. This study furtherinvestigates the factors that influence the implementation of e-supply chain systemsalong two dimensions: complexity of a firm's operations and the firm's ability tointegrate the external partners into the e-supply chains, which determine thecoverage and the extendibility of the e-supply chain systems. Based on thediscussion of the two factors, a framework is developed to help firms to implementtheir e-supply chain systems. It is hoped that this research can shed light for firmson the selection of the appropriate e-supply chain mode and its implementationframework.E-supply chain is just starting up in china. Enterprises tend to be out of datewith their concepts on supply chains and apparently have devoted inadequateefforts on its design. The implementation of e-supply chain is lagged even behindbecause of the lack of the coordination of the whole supply chains. In order toestablish an accurate, quick response, and efficient e-supply chain, enterprisesneed to update their knowledge about e-supply chain, to take advantages of themodern information technologies, to reconstruct their organizations andmanagement control systems, to recognize the superiority in the external resourcesof supply chain partners, to improve the strategic cooperation among supply chainpartners, and to develop an effective incentive mechanism among supply chainpartners.