Bringing "E" to corporate America : the drivers of e-business adoption and its impact on firm performance

Across industries, firms are actively engaged in the adoption and integration of e-business tools and practices to better manage their internal processes, as well as their interfaces with the external environment. While the importance of e-business initiatives has been widely accepted, little is known about (1) how firms differ in their levels and kinds of e-business adoption and integration, (2) the drivers of such variations across firms, and (3) the impact of the intensity of e-business adoption on firm performance. This dissertation aims to address these issues. Using an e-business adoption matrix that reflects the depth of e-business adoption across four business functions, I find that firms differ significantly in the intensity of e-business adoption across these functional domains. In this study, a comprehensive framework that captures the drivers and implications of e-business vii adoption is proposed and empirically tested using data collected from senior managers in four industries (telecommunications, computer hardware, semiconductor, and manufacturing equipment). The findings of this dissertation provide new insights into the drivers of e-business adoption, actual e-business adoption patterns across firms, and the firm-level performance implications of ebusiness adoption strategy.