The Impact of Electronic Commerce on the Supply Chain

This e-book focuses on the impact of Electronic Commerce on the Supply Chain. The e-book starts with a theoretical paper on the adoption of e-procurement technologies by Azadegan and Teich. Continuing on the subject of e-procurement, the second paper by Luzzini et al. tackles the identification of maturity stages for e-procurement adoption by conceptualizing and developing a theoretical framework. Quesada et al. posit a model to investigate relationships between e-procurement technology usage, procurement practices and procurement performance. The fourth paper by Hong, Tran, and Park empirically examines the impacts of supplier- and customer-oriented electronic communication technologies on supply chain integration and manufacturing competitive capabilities. Dobrzykowski, Hong, and Vonderembse examine the use of specific supply chain Information Technologies (IT) for e-commerce, e-procurement, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), when implementing lean practices to achieve mass customization (MC) performance. As supply chains become more complex, having not only to deal to a worldwide supplier base but also with multi-tiered networks of suppliers, visibility has become a critical topic. In order to gain some insights on this subject, the sixth paper by Tumino et al. provides a structured and quantitative approach to assess the visibility that a company has of its supply chain. Finally, Salgaro and Perego discuss an interesting quantitative assessment of the benefits obtainable by using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to integrate the order-to-payment process.