“Implications_of_E-Commerce_on_Collaborative_Business_Environment__Insights_from_Organizational_Ecology”

The Volume 1 research was written by VR Salkute, SR Kolhe and Ambedkar Veedhi of North Maharashtra University, India. It is composed of 6 pages posted in International Research Journal last April 2011. The paper discussed the implications of E-Commerce from the perspective of organizational ecology theory, starting with establishing the connection of Internet to the collaborative environment using the three phase analysis in ecological perspective. The objective of the study is to use the 3 phases as framework to study collaboration using E-Commerce. The research has provided illustration of phases of organizational ecology analysis in table form. There is a comparison of concepts in traditional context and internet context, in order to provide analysis of the 3 phases of organizational ecology. An overview of each phase was provided also in this research. The dynamics of internet competition was illustrated by comparing 2 firms using E-Commerce Technique. The matrix describes the dimension of competition that a firm faces when employing the internet. In the latter part of this research, the authors discussed the impact of E-Commerce in their country, India. The discussion of this research included more of geographic boundaries, the influence of Indian government to e-commerce and legislation with respect to e-business in India. And for the finale, the authors discussed the implications of the research to the phases of organizational ecology analysis. The research title is engaging but in terms of connectivity to the body of research, it has not completely illustrated the pertinence to the title. The abstract of this paper when compared with its core provided an adequate overview but since there’s a slight shift of concentration to the state of e-commerce in India, the abstract of this paper has become deficient due to additional topics discussed. Moreover, the title indicated the implications of e-commerce but the discussion concentrated on one side of the “implications” of e-commerce. The core of the research journal covered only few areas of the topic. The terminologies used were not given clarity. The research should have been more explicit if the following explanations on the terms used were provided: Collaborative business is a concept where companies share information with each other in order to create stronger operations. While collaborative business can seem counterproductive to developing a competitive advantage, it actually helps companies to learn new processes or activities that can improve productivity or output. The collaboration functions as a symbiotic relationship, where each company has a product or service that will help the other; when they trade or share these items, both companies benefit. In business, competencies are invaluable for creating a competitive advantage. These competencies include abilities or activities that allow one company to complete tasks or produce goods and services better than another. Competencies typically include information gathering, production methods, customer service, and employee development, among others. Collaborative business allows one company to work with another in order to develop these competencies. Core competencies, however, may not be transferable from one company to the next. These represent a company’s outstanding ability or abilities that competitors cannot easily imitate. Population ecology is the study of dynamic changes within a given set of organizations. Using the population as their level of analysis, population ecologists statistically examine the birth and mortality of organizations and organizational forms within the population over long periods Organizational ecology (also organizational demography and the population ecology of organizations) is a theoretical and empirical approach in the social sciences that is especially used in organizational studies. Organizational ecology utilizes insights from biology, economics, and sociology, and employs statistical analysis to try and understand the conditions under which organizations emerge, grow, and die. Organizational ecology examines the environment in which organizations compete and a process like natural selection occurs. This theory looks at the death of organizations (firm mortality), the birth of new organizations (organizational founding), as well as organizational growth and change. Organizational ecology contains a number of more specific 'theory fragments', including: • Inertia and change • Niche width • Resource partitioning • Density dependence • Age dependence Organizational ecology has over the years become one of the central fields in organizational studies, and is known for its empirical, quantitative character. Ecological studies usually have a large-scale, longitudinal focus (datasets often span several decades, sometimes even centuries). There were certain ideas were underemphasized such as the disadvantages and limitations of e-commerce to the collaborative business environment. The authors focused more on its advantages and failed to balance the research. Here are some of the suggested topics that could have been included in this research: Disadvantages of Electronic Commerce Electronic commerce is also characterized by some technological and inherent limitations which has restricted the number of people using this revolutionary system. One important disadvantage of e-commerce is that the Internet has still not touched the lives of a great number of people, either due to the lack of knowledge or trust. A large number of people do not use the Internet for any kind of financial transaction. Some people simply refuse to trust the authenticity of completely impersonal business transactions, as in the case of e-commerce. Many people have reservations regarding the requirement to disclose personal and private information for security concerns. Many times, the legitimacy and authenticity of different e-commerce sites have also been questioned. Another limitation of e-commerce is that it is not suitable for perishable commodities like food items. People prefer to shop in the conventional way than to use e-commerce for purchasing food products. So e-commerce is not suitable for such business sectors. The time period required for delivering physical products can also be quite significant in case of e-commerce. A lot of phone calls and e-mails may be required till you get your desired products. However, returning the product and getting a refund can be even more troublesome and time consuming than purchasing, in case if you are not satisfied with a particular product. They should have been more careful in providing data especially in their citation of benefits of e-commerce. The following clauses could have been added on this research to achieve accurate outcome since the research’s objective is to discuss the implication of e-commerce on collaborative business ecology. • Time for delivery of physical products. It is possible to visit a local music store and walk out with a compact disc or a bookstore and leave with a book. E-commerce is often used to buy goods that are not available locally from businesses all over the world, meaning that physical goods need to be delivered, which takes time and costs money. In some cases there are ways around this, for example, with electronic files of the music or books being accessed across the Internet, but then these are not physical goods. • Physical product, supplier & delivery uncertainty. When you walk out of a shop with an item, it’s yours. You have it; you know what it is, where it is and how it looks. In some respects e-commerce purchases are made on trust. This is because, firstly, not having had physical access to the product, a purchase is made on an expectation of what that product is and its condition. Secondly, because supplying businesses can be conducted across the world, it can be uncertain whether or not they are legitimate businesses and are not just going to take your money. It’s pretty hard to knock on their door to complain or seek legal recourse! Thirdly, even if the item is sent, it is easy to start wondering whether or not it will ever arrive. • Perishable goods. Forget about ordering a single gelato ice cream from a shop in Rome! Though specialized or refrigerated transport can be used, goods bought and sold via the Internet tend to be durable and non-perishable: they need to survive the trip from the supplier to the purchasing business or consumer. This shifts the bias for perishable and/or non-durable goods back towards traditional supply chain arrangements, or towards relatively more local e-commerce-based purchases, sales and distribution. In contrast, durable goods can be traded from almost anyone to almost anyone else, sparking competition for lower prices. In some cases this leads to disintermediation in which intermediary people and businesses are bypassed by consumers and by other businesses that are seeking to purchase more directly from manufacturers. • Limited and selected sensory information. The Internet is an effective conduit for visual and auditory information: seeing pictures, hearing sounds and reading text. However it does not allow full scope for our senses: we can see pictures of the flowers, but not smell their fragrance; we can see pictures of a hammer, but not feel its weight or balance. Further, when we pick up and inspect something, we choose what we look at and how we look at it. This is not the case on the Internet. If we were looking at buying a car on the Internet, we would see the pictures the seller had chosen for us to see but not the things we might look for if we were able to see it in person. And, taking into account our other senses, we can’t test the car to hear the sound of the engine as it changes gears or sense the smell and feel of the leather seats. There are many ways in which the Internet does not convey the richness of experiences of the world. This lack of sensory information means that people are often much more comfortable buying via the Internet generic goods – things that they have seen or experienced before and about which there is little ambiguity, rather than unique or complex things. • Returning goods. Returning goods online can be an area of difficulty. The uncertainties surrounding the initial payment and delivery of goods can be exacerbated in this process. Will the goods get back to their source' Who pays for the return postage' Will the refund be paid' Will I be left with nothing' How long will it take' Contrast this with the offline experience of returning goods to a shop. • Privacy, security, payment, identity, contract. Many issues arise – privacy of information, security of that information and payment details, whether or not payment details (eg credit card details) will be misused, identity theft, contract, and, whether we have one or not, what laws and legal jurisdiction apply. • Defined services & the unexpected. E-commerce is an effective means for managing the transaction of known and established services, that is, things that are everyday. It is not suitable for dealing with the new or unexpected. For example, a transport company used to dealing with simple packages being asked if it can transport a hippopotamus, or a customer asking for a book order to be wrapped in blue and white polka dot paper with a bow. Such requests need human intervention to investigate and resolve. • Personal service. Although some human interaction can be facilitated via the web, e-commerce cannot provide the richness of interaction provided by personal service. For most businesses, e-commerce methods provide the equivalent of an information-rich counter attendant rather than a salesperson. This also means that feedback about how people react to product and service offerings also tends to be more granular or perhaps lost using e-commerce approaches. If your only feedback is that people are (or are not) buying your products or services online, this is inadequate for evaluating how to change or improve your e-commerce strategies and/or product and service offerings. Successful business use of e-commerce typically involves strategies for gaining and applying customer feedback. This helps businesses to understand, anticipate and meet changing online customer needs and preferences, which is critical because of the comparatively rapid rate of ongoing Internet-based change. • Size and number of transactions. E-commerce is most often conducted using credit card facilities for payments, and as a result very small and very large transactions tend not to be conducted online. The size of transactions is also impacted by the economics of transporting physical goods. For example, any benefits or conveniences of buying a box of pens online from a US-based business tend to be eclipsed by the cost of having to pay for them to be delivered to you in Australia. The delivery costs also mean that buying individual items from a range of different overseas businesses is significantly more expensive than buying all of the goods from one overseas business because the goods can be packaged and shipped together. Thus, on evaluating the various pros and cons of electronic commerce, we can say that the advantages of e-commerce have the potential to outweigh the disadvantages. A proper strategy to address the technical issues and to build up customers trust in the system, can change the present scenario and help e-commerce adapt to the changing needs of the world. Since the authors’ underlying assumption is that e-commerce is an integral part of today’s business environment, their matrix provided in this journal was able to support this assumption. But in terms of objectivity, the authors of this research failed to give a balanced perspective on their topic because of omission of the clauses that are relevant to this research. Furthermore, the sudden shift of discussion to state of e-commerce in India becomes incidental to the research. Should the authors want to deliberate on this area, there should have been a hint in the title to give relevance to the topic.