Since the commercialization of the World Wide Web, web technologies and the Internet have enabled companies to perform digital business operations more efficiently and effectively than ever before. These apparent gains in business performance have transformed e-Business operations from an exploratory action to a competitive necessity for most organizations. However, this e-Business transformation requires specific skills, capital, information, technology, access to markets, and core resources that many firms lack. Relatively little is known about how firms obtain these e-Business-specific resources and capabilities. One increasingly common approach appears to be the use of alliances. We know that firms engaging in e- Business transformation use a range of alliance forms to enhance their e-Business operations, however little is known about the nuances of e-Business alliance formation and the resultant effects. Drawing upon resource-based view, social exchange and institutional theories, our research objective is to: 1) identify the antecedents to e-Business alliance formation, 2) understand why firms choose a specific alliance form over other alternatives when participating in an e-Business alliance and 3) capture the firm performance outcomes of an e-Business alliance.
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