Stanislav Kreuzer

A Unified View of Electronic Invoicing Adoption: Developing a Meta-Model on the Governmental Level

The digitalization of invoices and their processing is a key factor for the improvement of process efficiency on the G2B (government-to-business) and G2G (government-to-government) level. Some European countries like Denmark or Spain already started to mandate electronic invoicing, but most other countries in the European Union are still in the planning phase for implementation. This weak adoption rate hinders governments to generate benefits of electronic invoicing, so an understanding of this fact from a public sector perspective is crucial. Still, the majority of preceding studies investigated electronic invoicing from a private sector perspective. In addition to that, an overarching model explaining electronic invoicing adoption is still missing. This paper develops a unifying meta-model of influencing factors of electronic invoicing adoption on governmental level by analyzing relevant literature and by conducting expert interviews. The paper then discusses implications for future research with a focus on the public sector.

Organizational Resistance to E-Invoicing --- Results from an Empirical Investigation among SMEs

In order to improve the governmental efficiency, effectiveness and transparency, an important part of e-government is the digitalization of documents and the processing of these documents through electronic channels. Such a critical document in business process chains is the invoice, which is why the European Commission strives to increase the adoption and diffusion of electronic invoicing e-invoicing among public and private sector organizations. However, the adoption rate among businesses is still low and especially very small firms resist using e-invoicing. By collecting quantitative and qualitative survey data of 416 German companies resisting the usage of e-invoicing, we confirm and explore factors affecting the resistant behavior towards the electronic exchange of invoices and elaborate on differences in those factors with organizational size. In particular among micro firms, the lack of knowledge regarding the theme and procedure of e-invoicing represents the relatively most important influencing factor, while comparatively larger firms also expect huge change management efforts.

Explaining organizational susceptibility to coercive pressure: results from a field experiment on e-invoicing IOIS adoption

The establishment of the interoperability of accounting and other IS with those of business partners is regarded as a primary source of efficiency gains and innovation for organizations in today’s networked economy. Thus, inter-organizational information systems (IOIS) play a critical role in present day organizations and their relationships with business partners. Nevertheless, potential benefits that can be achieved from an IOIS implementation are tightly connected to the achievement of a critical number of adopters among business partners. One primary strategy introduced in this context is the exertion of coercive pressure to persuade business partners to adopt. However, results of prior investigations on the influence of coercive pressure on organizational adoption decisions have varied, while experimental investigations of coercive pressure as a strategy to foster adoption of IOIS among business partners have remained scarce. This study conducts a controlled field experiment on organizational level to investigate the effect of applied coercive pressure on the adoption of IOIS among 126 business partners of a medium-sized firm in Germany. Results present empirical evidence for a positive effect of coercive pressure. Assuming a configurational perspective, several organizational characteristics are further hypothesized to moderate this relationship. The type of industry and the degree of technology readiness are found to be significant moderators. The results emphasize the importance of a configurational perspective in investigations on the organizational level, and provide decision-makers with valuable insights into the mechanisms that drive the effect of coercive pressure as a strategy to foster adoption of IOIS among business partners.