Do interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management practices enhance collaborative commerce adoption?

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the contributions of interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management practices as predictors of collaborative commerce (c-commerce) adoption. A non-compensatory adoption decision process was modelled using a neural network approach to examine the predictors of c-commerce adoption. A survey was undertaken in 136 firms for this research. The results showed that both interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management processes played an important role in predicting the adoption of c-commerce. In particular, variables from interorganisational relationships such as trust, communication, collaboration, and information sharing are found to contribute strongly to the predictive power of the model when compared with knowledge-management processes. This study provides insights for firms that would like to improve their supply-chain collaboration through the implementation of c-commerce. The findings lead to an understanding of what attributes of interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management processes can contribute to the improved adoption of c-commerce in the supply chain. Unlike past adoption studies which have tended to focus on technology, and organisational and environmental factors, this research examined interorganisational relationships and knowledge-management processes which are increasingly gaining the attention of researchers and practitioners. This study has also extended the existing literature by examining a non-compensatory model for technology adoption.