B2B E-COMMERCE ADOPTION: FRAMEWORKS FOR SMEs

The objectives of this paper is to develop the framework for business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce) in developing countries like Malaysia with specific interest in the small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) sector. This paper begins by identifying internal and external barriers collected from the available literature which the results are used to develop a framework for ecommerce adoption among SMEs. Among the internal barriers identified are related to organization resource, top management, and individual’s characteristic, while for external barriers are relate to technological, economic, political, legal, trading partners, competitors and IT consultants. The internal barriers that arise within the organizations may be resolved within the organizations, but the external barriers need a lot of supports and interventions from government, private sectors and trading partners since it is beyond organization control. The paper shows how inter-organizational system adoption and diffusion theories and practicalities can be explored for developing the proposed e-commerce adoption framework. It is argued that results from research qualitative approach through case studies using the framework will able to identify the factors influencing the adoption of e-commerce technologies by the SMEs in developing countries.