Abstract
The ups and downs of e-business investments are related to a hype cycle. This hype cycle strengthened the statement that companies are too willing to believe in the promises of the new Internet economy without really thinking about internet-ability. According to the data in this practice-oriented survey work, SMEs are more eager to follow the e-business hype cycle. We try to give some explanations for these differences in e-business between SMEs and large companies. This requires an examination of the planning, the drivers and the barriers for conducting business processes over a computer-mediated network. We found that larger companies are mainly driven by cost-cutting to implement e-business, while SMEs attach, next to cost-savings, high importance to cooperation between their suppliers and clients. Furthermore, we can observe that larger companies see more opportunities in translating their ebusiness strategy into a formal long-term plan. This explains perhaps why larger companies are less trend sensitive for investing in e-business than SMEs.
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Deschoolmeester, D., Vanpoucke, E., Willaert, P. (2004). Drivers and Barriers for E-Business: Evolution Over Time and Comparison Between SMEs and Large Companies. In: Lamersdorf, W., Tschammer, V., Amarger, S. (eds) Building the E-Service Society. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol 146. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8155-3_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8155-3_25
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