The Relationship Between Internet Use and Cooperative Partnerships in B2B e-commerce

A survey has been conducted within Australian organisations using business to business (B2B) e-commerce enabling technologies. The results indicate that there is a strong relationship between the contribution to business performance of cooperative arrangements with both suppliers and customers, and that derived from use of the Internet. At the same time, although extent of involvement in partnerships with both customers and suppliers appear to be complementary, it is less apparent that extent of use of the Internet supports the same relationship. The results also show that the use of multiple stakeholders for the development of Internet strategy is the dominant driver of both implementation and performance. The findings therefore indicate that focus on involvement of multiple stakeholders in formulation of strategies will be more likely to yield better outcomes, rather than a focus on the technologies per se. Technical capacity will determine the ability to extend implementation of Internet based applications across the supply chain, but a broad and coordinated approach to the development of strategy will more likely determine performance outcomes.