Inter-organizational Studies- Academic Article

The Effects of E-business on the Performance of Strategic Alliances

By: Hung-Wen Lee and Jhy-Hong Ding

What this article discusses is the different affects that E-business plays on the performance of strategic alliances. E-business and strategic alliances are both ways that businesses can gain a competitive advantage in the global market. With the growth of communication and information technologies companies have found it beneficial to use these technologies to help them gain this competitive advantage.  Organizations are able experiment and see what strategies would work with the implementation of e-commerce.

The writers Hung and Lee present 10 hypotheses that they test in order to determine their final results. The ten hypotheses presented are:

H1a-3c: The relationships of both partners, the better communication of both partners and the greater level of alliance performance all depends on the greater extent of e-business and how much resources are invested to it.

H2a-2c: The extent of similarity between alliance members is determined by the higher level of relationship expectations, communication expectations and trusts between both alliance members.

H3a-3b: The extent of expectations of the future relationships between the alliances is determined by the higher level of communication and trust between the alliances.

H4: When the extent of communication between the alliances is high then so is the trust.

H5: When there is a high level of trust between the alliances, the performance between alliances will be higher.

The article also presents a model the helps in discovering the relationship between e-business and strategic alliances. The model presented uses many variables such as strategic alliance familiarity, alliance and communication expectations and the trust between both partners.

                                  Figure 1: Research Framework

The authors found that the model they used to test their results found that some of the hypothesis that they suggested were accurate. Although the implementation of e-business improves communication it does not play a direct role of the performance of strategic alliances. It is the different applications that have an effect on alliances. What their testing found is the positive level of trust and communication between strategic alliances was based on the expectations of future relationships and the level of e-business.

My thoughts are similar the results that were found. I believe that e-business can help strategic alliances in many ways but the most important thing for strategic alliances is to develop a good level of trust and communication with one another.

Article Citation:

Hung-Wen, Lee, and Ding Jhy-Hong. "The Effects Of E-Business On The Performance Of Strategic Alliances." Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 21.7 (2010): 707-724. Business Source Complete. Web. 3 Aug. 2012.