Electronic supply-chain orientation and its competitive dimensions

Electronic business refers to the way of doing business electronically and has a great impact on business processes, particularly on integrated supply-chain management. However, most of these issues are descriptive and have often been mentioned without clearly indicating how the process can be implemented gradually and what this integration really requires. This study developed a framework to formulate electronic business capabilities and integrated supply-chain management capabilities, and then empirically tested a taxonomy that illustrated a firm's strategic positioning along these two components. The results from the Australian manufacturing industry indicated there to be four general strategic options that firms adopted: the Lagger, the E-Bus player, the ISCM player and the Integrator. Furthermore, the manufacturers tended to compete on three competitive dimensions simulta neously: information integrity, networking and joint efficiency operations, and B2B applications.