earticle

영어

Business-to-Business electronic commerce websites are a common form of inter-organizational systems that span organizational boundaries and enables organizations to exchange information in a seamless fashion. To reap the desired benefits it is important that the website be used in the intended manner. The level and extent of use of a business-to-business website depends partly on the inclination to use the website by the users in the primary organization and in the user organizations independently and the combined inclination of the organizations together. This combined inclination is referred to as the System Inclination, with dominance playing a key role. Each organization has certain characteristics of its own and may differ significantly in their inclination to use. It is important to analyze the factors that determine this inclination to use, so that organizations can adopt appropriate management mechanisms to control it. This paper proposes a framework to explain the organizational factors and their influence on the inclination to use a website, based on study of four Indian buyer-supplier dyads. Inclination to use is found to be influenced by factors like top management support, website characteristics, adequate support mechanisms, user group orientation towards electronic commerce and basic IT drive among the employees, at both the primary and user organizations.