A new breed of industry known as B2B (business-to-business) ehub operation is emerging. Previous studies in this area focus either on its intermediation function or on its role as a supply chain optimization facilitator. In this study, we observed the functionality of ehubs in an integrative way and categorized them into seven groups. Each of the functional groups is analyzed and its role in B2...

When automating business processes spanning organizational boundaries, it is required to explicitly specify the interfaces of the cooperating software systems in order to achieve the desired properties of interoperability and loose coupling. So-called B2B protocols provide for the formal specification of relevant aspects of an interface, ranging from document types to transactions. Currently, t...

In the late 1990’s researchers believed that B2B markets were set to revolutionise e-procurement. New marketplaces were being created on an almost weekly basis to cater for the procurement needs of numerous and diverse industry sectors. More recently however, researchers have noted that many B2B markets are under performing and failure rates are high. We draw upon research on strategic alliance...

Business-to-Business (B2B) electronic commerce environments are characterized by frequent information exchange. The Internet and advanced information technologies (IT) permit organizations to access information across organizational boundaries. It is important to assure organizations of the quality of information they get from other organizations. However, a well-established data quality (DQ) s...

Content Management becomes a cornerstone of successful B2B electronic commerce. The B2B players use different document standards to represent their business documents, and different content standards to specify the products. Thousands of the players meet together at B2B marketplaces, and the marketplaces must be able to integrate numerous document and content standards. The large number of the ...

B2B Engagement, IBM Software Group, Somers, NY. Abstract The B2B e-Commerce area is poised for tremendous growth. While this is a great opportunity for the system designers, the challenges are abundant as well. In this paper, we list the requirements on an application platform for B2B e-Commerce. We describe a framework-based approach to designing such a platform. We use design patterns to desc...

a r t i c l e i n f o This research investigates the determinants of the performance of small and medium sized manufacturers on business-to-business electronic marketplaces (B2B EMs). Based on the resource-based view, the framework proposed suggests that a manufacturing firm's performance on a B2B EM is determined by EM enabling capabilities, namely the online marketing capability, flexible man...

Many prognoses of B2B e-commerce and its potential for developing countries presume that it is a panacea enabling producer firms in these countries to sell their products and services more easily in external markets by reducing the transaction costs they must incur to participate in international trade. Drawing on data from a detailed analysis of 117 B2B e-hubs in the garments/apparel and agric...

Received: 21 July 2006 Revised: 29 November 2006 Accepted: 1 March 2007 Abstract Small businesses, in general, play dominant roles in terms of employment generation and share in total business activities. However, studies have shown that small businesses are also slow in their uptake of modern technologies including electronic commerce. This paper presents the result of an empirical study that ...