Sunny Marche

Sorting through the dot bomb rubble: how did the high-profile e-tailers fail?

During the late 1990s and early into the year 2000, we witnessed the launch, rapid rise and sudden fall of a relatively new industry...e-commerce. With the widespread use of the Internet, exciting business to consumer (B2C) e-tail opportunities emerged. Sites began selling online directly to consumers, everything from books, to pet supplies, to clothing. This created a frenzy of companies trying to get online, to stake their claim, and to get a piece of the action. The hype did not last. In April 2000, a stock market correction sent prices in the high-tech sector tumbling, and prompted investors to re-evaluate, pull back funding and demand profitability. Many e-tail ventures were unable to survive in this new, harsher environment, and hundreds began to close their virtual doors. Analysts generalized that the business owners were just too young, or too inexperienced. Business models were criticized. Other theories maintained the people running the business were so intent on breaking all the rules that they failed to consider some of the traditional business success factors. Fingers pointed in all directions, to venture capitalists, to investors, and to the entrepreneurs themselves. The following research summarizes literature that seeks to explore the success and failure of traditional businesses, and applies those factors to some high profile failed e-tail businesses. The paper uses five e-tail companies, pets.com, boo.com, streamline.com, garden.com and eToys.com as examples of the hundreds of dot com businesses that failed. Each was a pure-play Internet business with no bricks and mortar presence. These five failures all occurred on a large scale, with the businesses burning through hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few years. Comparison against known factors of success and failure demonstrates that the e-tail businesses were victims of timing and natural industry evolution to some extent, but they also made fundamental mistakes in their attempts to grow quickly.

Enabling trust online

Trust is one of the mainstays of commerce. However, as more and more individuals and businesses participate in electronic commerce, it is becoming apparent that much of what supports trust in the traditional commerce setting is unavailable online. This paper explores the nature of trust online, identifying the ten principles underpinning the concept of trust and the online mechanisms that promote it. Label Bureaus that capture authoritative third party ratings and Reputation Systems that capture user feedback and opinions (second party ratings) are examined with respect to these ten principles and it is shown that neither type of rating system satisfies all ten of them. Finally, a new hybrid form of trust infrastructure is proposed that integrates first party information, second party opinions, and third party ratings and, in so doing, addresses all ten of the principles of trust.

Towards a typology of knowledge-intensive organizations: determinant factors

Phrases such as ‘knowledge-intensive organizations’ (KIOs) and ‘knowledge-intensive firms’ (KIFs), have recently found common usage, describing the distinct activities and attributes of some organizations. But a review of the literature reveals a lack of consensus among scholars and practitioners on the definition of KIOs. What is also absent from the discussion is an agreement on the factors that differentiate KIOs from non-KIOs, and how those factors affect knowledge management (KM) theory and practice. The objective of this paper is to extend a typology of KIOs as a preliminary step to conducting research on these types of organizations. With the typology of KIOs presented in this paper, we hope to provide a basis of distinguishing these organizations from other organizations, and also to allow one to perform comparative organizational analysis. The typology will also help researchers identify which of the organizations are knowledge-intense, and the nature of their knowledge-intensity, so that they help these organizations in designing appropriate KM tools.

Classifying organizations by knowledge intensity – necessary next‐steps

Purpose – This study aims to empirically explore the key elements for classifying and differentiating knowledge‐intensive organizations (KIOs) from other traditional organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The studys conceptual framework is based on the prevailing propositions from the literature on KIOs and is explored using a survey of knowledge management (KM) professionals, a purposely selected community of practice (CoP).Findings – The results suggest that organizations can generally be divided into two groups – KIOs and non‐KIOs, and there appear to be some clear factors that differentiate KIOs from non‐KIOs according to the CoP.Research limitations/implications – This study lays a foundation for the systematic development and evaluation of KIOs and their KM practices. The results from this study can stimulate issue formulation and hypothesis generation for investigation by KM researchers and academics. The study focused on a few types of organizations drawn from the literature which may limit ...

Case study analysis of the impacts of electronic commerce on the strategic management of container shipping companies

Despite the prevalence of its use, very little is understood about the role of electronic commerce (EC) practice on the strategic management of container shipping companies. Four case studies were undertaken to assess the main uses, motivations, barriers and strategic relevance of EC in the container shipping industry between 1992 and 2002. The cases studies included one large, one medium and one small deep-sea container line, and one medium-sized feeder line. The research found that despite pressing technical and managerial barriers, the need to improve internal economies provided the most fertile grounds for EC use in 1992 and EC was seen as a tactical tool to achieve these goals. By 2002, customer-oriented motivations became critical to the increased relevance of EC and to its perception as a business necessity.

E‐commerce impact on Canadian public sector audit practice

Purpose – This paper reports on the research conducted into the adaptations Canadian public sector auditors have made to the emergence of e‐commerce and e‐business in the delivery of public services.Design/methodology/approach – A comprehensive review of the literature was completed as a foundation for creating a semi‐structure interview questionnaire used in a series of interviews with audit executives from 20 audit organizations in Canadas public sectors.Findings – The study found a distinct disconnect between what is reported in the literature and what has actually happened in practice. Practicing auditors do have a significant interest in the impact of e‐business on the audit profession specifically and on their client organizations generally. But there is significant disagreement about whether e‐business constitutes just another set of technologically mediated changes, not much different from the many others of the past 30 years, or whether e‐business is truly disruptive in nature. The consequence o...

Electronic commerce and the strategic management of deep-sea container shipping companies: an exploratory survey analysis

Despite the increased adoption of electronic commerce (EC) among container shipping companies, the role of EC practice on their strategic management is poorly understood. This study takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the uses, motivations, barriers and strategic relevance of EC in the container shipping industry in 1992 and 2002. To test five hypotheses, a 41-question survey was sent to 297 shipping companies, yielding an 11.1% response rate. The research found that the role of EC became more strategic and relevant for the identification of business goals. This change, however, could not be explained solely by the desire of companies to exploit EC externally with clients, but also by their ability to master EC internally. The role of EC was more strategic in companies where service is a key element of the companys competitive strategy and EC is regarded as a competitive necessity.