Potential benefits and emerging challenges of B2B e-procurement systems in a supply chain.

摘要

The objective of the dissertation research is to investigate empirically impacts of B2B (Business-to-Business) e-procurement systems on SCM (Supply Chain Management). The dissertation research consists of three main studies: (1) Expectations and realized benefits from the B2B e-procurement systems, (2) data accuracy and possible data manipulation in information sharing, and (3) evolution of an online trading community via the B2B e-procurement systems. The first study argues the benefits from the e-procurement systems, whereas the second study deals with their emerging challenges. For these two studies, we conducted a questionnaire survey of raw material or component suppliers in the electrical and electronics industry of Southeast Asia, and analyzed the data using PLS (Partial Least Squares) models. The third study is based on an exploratory case study of two Singapore-based B2B e-procurement operators for direct materials in the electrical and electronics industry.; In the first study, we consider three types of benefits from the B2B e-procurement systems from suppliers' perspectives: Operational efficiency, relational advantage, and strategic gains. Using these three types of benefits, we investigate suppliers' expectations from the adoption of e-procurement systems. We also examine their realized benefits as a result of the use of e-procurement systems. We find that early adopters have different characteristics from late adopters in both expected and realized benefits.; In the second study, we focus on buyers' demand forecasts among several types of shared information. We study data accuracy issues entailed by the B2B e-procurement systems, and explore possibility for opportunistic behavior that causes data inaccuracy. Instead of asking buyers directly whether they inflate their demand forecasts or not, we investigate factors that cause suppliers to doubt their buyers' intentional overstatement of demand forecasts as a proxy of buyers' untruthful information sharing.; In the third study, we investigate evolution of a third party electronic trading community over the Internet from buyers' perspectives. We observe that there are two types of online trading community formation at different stages of the community evolution: Buyer-driven and supplier-driven community formation. Now, however, some buyers tend to leave the community to build their own private communities using their proprietary e-procurement systems.