Abstract
Technological advance of the last decades created an atmosphere in which the organizations are forced to look actively for new options for the cost reduction, in addition to, simultaneously, seeking to compete more effectively in their markets. This context requires focused, swift, more flexible and more competitive organizations which are forced, many times, to implement radical changes in the way they conduct business, employ people and use technology. Despite the recognition and the attention given to electronic business (or e-business) over the last years, this type of business hasn’t yet achieved a desirable maturity stage. This problem, current and stated over the last years, demands research efforts so that a solution can be found to solve it. In this chapter, the authors explore a range of constraints which are suggested by the literature to influence e-business evolution, so that organizations could be better equipped in anticipating any difficulties while in progress through their e-business initiatives.
TopE-Business And Maturity Models
The terminology involved within the field of Information Communication Technology (ICT) usage on the Internet is vast and contradictory. Two frequently used terms are e-commerce and e-business.
Kalakota and Whinston (1996) define electronic commerce as the “… buying and selling of information, products and services via computer networks”. Laudon and Travel (2006) define electronic commerce as the “use of the Internet and the Web to transact business”. Sewell and McCarthey (2001) identify e-business as business facilitated by ICT. Others argue that e-business encompasses the entire world of internal and external electronically based activities, including electronic commerce (Kalakota and Robinson, 2003). In the scope of this chapter, electronic commerce will be regarded as a subset of e-business.
Based on various types of trading partners, there are many categories of e-business, for example: Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C), Consumer to Business (C2B), Business to Government (B2G), Consumer to Consumer (C2C), Pear to Pear (P2P), Government to Citizen (G2C), Citizen to Government (C2G) and Business to Employee (B2E). Without the use of face to face operations, all e-business transactions are performed electronically by using computer and communication networks.
The rules of business game are being rewritten to become the rules of e-business, as listed in Table 1.