An exploratory study of factors affecting adoption and implementation of B2B e-commerce in Australian healthcare organizations

Abstract

For the healthcare industry, the adoption and implementation of business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) systems can lead to many benefits such as an increased accessibility to healthcare providers, reduction in supply chain and inventory costs, and reduced medical errors. However, despite high expectations for realizing the benefits of B2B e-commerce in healthcare, its adoption remains poorly understood and is also a relatively under-researched area. Although B2B e-commerce provides these organizations a wealth of new opportunities and ways of doing business, it also presents them with a series of challenges. Hence, the case study approach was utilized to (1) to identify B2B e-commerce adoption and implementation critical constraint-minimization factors for organizations within the healthcare industry; and (2) to develop a framework to manage these critical constraint-minimization factors. A key contribution of the paper is to propose a framework in which critical constraint-minimization factors faced by healthcare organizations undertaking B2B e-commerce activities can be identified, examined, and managed.