Research On Enterprise E-Business Transformation: Based On Competence View

Enterprises are pushed into a global competition based on Internet with the boom of information technology, and e-Business has been the main platform of businesses. Efficient and effective e-business transformation has been one of the key factors that enterprises gain sustained competitive advantages in this era. It's also one of the newly emergent interests of IS academicians. But most of the studies are focusing on analyzing the influences of one special e-Business project, or limited to study the influences of the pure online business to the e-Business transformation. No theoretical foundations or methodologies have been established to direct the enterprises e-Business transformation. In our paper, we first establish an e-Business transformation model based on business competence perspective, and then we employ an empirical validation of this model and identify the key capacities of e-Business transformation. Based on the key capacities of e-Business transformation, several implementation methodologies for the E-Business transformation are also presented.First, a review on the employment of competence theory in IS research is made and the conception of the e-Business transformation is presented. Second, we identify the five dimensions of e-Business transformation competence based on a deep analyzing of the relationships between the IT capacity and the complementary organizational capacity, these five dimensions are: Corporate strategy and vision transformation competence, Organization structure transformation competence, Product and market transformation competence, Business process transformation competence, Corporate culture transformation competence. Then, a theoretical model is constructed based on the five dimensions and IT-Performance influential factors. Several hypothesizes were drawn based on this model and an empirical investigation of these hypothesizes was made by a survey. Several interesting results are found in this process.Next, we present 11 available models of e-Business based on Value Chain and Value Network analyzing. The key e-Business transformation competences needed in each model are also identified.A case study on Shanghai Tobacco Group is presented in the end. The available E-Business models were presented and the capacity fit are analyzed. We also give some suggestions on the development of E-Business in Shanghai Tobacco Group.