Measuring the impact of organizational constraints on the success of business-to-business e-commerce efforts: a transactional focus

This study investigated the impact of two organizational constraints, technological compatibility and operational capacity, on the success of business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) efforts over a range of business settings. We focused specifically on the transactional efficiencies gained through the use of B2B e-commerce. To accomplish this, we considered an instrument originally developed to measure the benefits of intra-organizational information systems and applied it in two inter-organizational contexts: electronic data interchange (EDI) usage, and B2B technology usage by firms without EDI. Analysis was carried out on 86 firms in the consumer electronics industry, approximately half of which were product-manufacturing firms and the other half service-providing firms. Our findings showed that the inter-organizational context had a significant bearing on which constraints have a greater impact on the success of B2B e-commerce efforts.