Management aspects of e-business--an empirical research.
Szentes, Balazs ; Gaal, Zoltan
1. INTRODUCTION
Many books or studies are written on how to operate a good
e-business system. The authors describe how to build up the system, what
are their advantages, but they usually hardly deal with the core
importance: how to implement or how it should operate in the right way.
How does it change the life of an organization? How does it change the
role of managers? What kind of organizational culture is needed to be
able to use all the benefits offered by the various e-business methods
and technologies?
In this paper we want to describe a possible research method (a
Ph.D. study carried out at the University of Pannonia) for understanding
the management changes caused by the use of various e-business
solutions. In the first part of the paper we define the framework of the
research, how we planned the research, after that we introduce our
hypothesis, at the end we describe our research, through which we can
examine the above mentioned questions, and show some of the preliminary
results.
2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 e-business
Narrowly e-business is the transformation of the key business
processes through the use of Internet technologies. But in a broader
view it is "all electronically mediated information exchanges, both
within an organization and with external stakeholders supporting the
range of business processes" (Chaffey, 2004). This definition
shows, that e-business is not just a commercial solution, but it needs a
revision of all the thoughts of the organizations own business.
If an organization decides to employ various e-business solutions,
among others it will face the following challenges:
* organizational changes required by e-business;
* management attitud changes;
* organizational flexibility;
* etc. (Papazoglou & Ribbers, 2006)
2.2 e-business and organization
e-business technologies and solutions have great impact on the
organization. According to Jackson and Harris the greatest challenge is
to fullfill the sometimes great organizational changes (Jackson &
Harris, 2003). The changing process sometimes generates radical changes.
e-business could make organizations flatter, but it increases the need
of coordination.
2.3 Organizational culture
As Schein says the culture of a group/organization can be defined
as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as
it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration,
that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be
taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in
relation to those problems. (Schein, 2004)
To diagnose an organizations culture, Cameron and Quinn suggest the
Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI). (Cameron &
Quinn, 2006) The instrument is in the form of a questionnaire that
requires individuals to respond to just six items:
* dominant characteristics;
* organizationals leadership;
* management of employees;
* organization glue;
* strategic emphases;
* criteria of success.
After the scoring and evaluating of the questionnaire, the culture
profile of the organization can be drawn. The method of Cameron and
Quinn for examining the organizational culture is a well described, easy
to fill and evaluate method.
In Fig 1. the four culture types of Cameron and Quinn can be seen.
But which one of the types supports the most the use of e-business
solutions? Which one suites the most for e-business solutions?
3. MODEL OF THE RESEARCH
As we see, e-business has impact on four dimensions of the
organizations: structure, management style, culture and
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
Our hypotheses are:
* the structure of organisations will be flatter due to the
adoption of e-Business: virtual organisations will emerge, the number of
decision making levels will be lower but therefore the need for
coordination will increase.
* The management style of managers will change: their role as a
leader will strengthen, they will focus much more on the future of their
organisation and less on day-to-day operation.
* The culture of organizations will be more external focused, and
the role of flexibility and discretion will be higher.
* The above mentioned changes will raise the efficiency of
organisations, due to more efficient decision making processes, quicker
customer responses, etc.
The model of thoughts for the research is shown in Fig.2.
4. STANDING OF RESEARCH
To verify our hytothesis we assembled a questionnaire. After expert
interviews and literature research, we made up the questionnaire, which
is available online at www.gtk.uni-pannon.hu/eBusiness. In order to get
the needed variety of datas, an offline version of the questionnaire was
formed as well, and posted. The language of the questionnaire is
Hungarian.
The aim of the questionnaire is to identify, wether the
organization is well "e-supported" or not. We expect, that
there are sygnificant differences between highly "e-supported"
organizations and organizations, with lower "e-support".
In our target group there are companies operating in Hungary,
regardless of size, or industry. In the following of the research we
plan to make case studies in western countries (for example in Germany)
as well, in order to be able to make comparison of the used best
practices.
The preliminary results of the questionnaire show the following.
The majority (about 50%) of the filled questionnaires came from
bigger organizations (nr. of employees over 250, the annual revenue over
50 million Euro), the rest is equally shared between small and middle
sized organizations.
The majority of those who filled in the questionnaires are middle
managers.
Counting the number and maturity of the applied e-business methods
and solutions half of the examined organizations can be called
"e-supported" organization.
As the result shows, according to the managers' judgement
their organization got flatter (the average number of hierarchy levels:
4) due to the use of the e-business solutions.
The managers said that they can arrange their day to day jobs
easier with the help of e-business solutions. They spend less time on
routine tasks, have much time for "planning the future"--their
leader role enforced.
The culture of organizations is not jet to be typed because of the
low number of the filled questionnaires (40 pieces, the questionnaire of
Cameron and Qiunn is used to identify the organizational culture.).
As the preliminary result shows, the questionnaire is able to
fullfill it's task: the above mentioned questions will be answered.
We hope, that the increase of the number of the filled in questionnaires
will make our results more appropriate.
5. FOLLOWING STEPS OF THE RESEARCH
In the near future we will gather the needed amount of datas to be
able to fullfill the planned quantitative analyses.
To get even more proper results, case studies will be created as
well. These case studies will represent some well formed e-supported
organizations and leaders, who have successfully overcome with the
challenges of e-business.
6. SUMMARY
In this paper we summarized the various management aspects of
e-business. We showed, e-business could influence the life of
organizations, it alters the organizational structure, culture, and the
role of managers.
We introduced a possible research model which is capable of
examining the changes caused by the implementation of e-business methods
and technologies.
The research is on its way, and we hope, that we can show the
freshest results at the 2nd European DAAAM International Young
Researchers' and Scientists' Conference in October, 2008.
7. REFERENCES
Cameron, K.S. & Quinn, R.E. (2006). Diagnosing and Changing
Organizational Culture--Based on the Competing Values Framework, Revised
ed., Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, ISBN: 978-0-7879-8283-6, San
Francisco
Chaffey, D. (2004). E-Business end E-commerce Management (2nd.
ed.), Prentice Hall FT, ISBN: 0 273 68378 0, Harlow, England
Jackson, P.--Harris, L. (2003): E-business and organisational
change--Reconciling traditional values with business transformation,
Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 497-511,
ISSN: 0953-4814
Papazoglou, M.P.; Ribbers, P.M.A. (2006).
e-Business--Organizational and technical foundations, John Wiley and
Sons, ISBN: 978-0-470-84376-5, Chiceshester, England
Schein, E.H. (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership, (3rd.
ed.), ISBN: 0-7879-6845-5, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco
GAAL, Z[oltan], Supervisor, Mentor