Because of the influence of globalization and updated information technologies (IT), firms in China face an urgent need to adopt e-procurement systems (EP) to deal with their daily procurement activities. However, implementing EP in China encounters various uncertainties from internal and external business environments. To address this issue, this research aims to examine the fit between business and the IT environment and to study its impact on system performance. The literature review allows the proposal of two internal business environmental uncertainties and two external business environmental uncertainties covering the perspectives of process, knowledge, partnership and environment. Based on a multiple-case study performed in four Chinese firms that supply various personal computer components to a Taiwanese original equipment manufacturer via an EP, it was found that the firms' external and internal uncertainty factors affected the performance of EP. In addition, an EP with a low level of integration -the EP type used most frequently in China -can only achieve great performance when the adopting firms faced a low uncertainty of environment, partnership and process, and had low levels of IT knowledge. It was also observed that lack of fit between the business environment and EP produced extra burdens and costs in the buyer-supplier relationship. This significantly reduced the system performance of the Chinese firms. Hence, the contribution of this research can be twofold. First, practitioners in China can use this framework to diagnose their environmental conditions and then choose the appropriate type of EP to implement. Second, researchers can build upon this model to further examine the impact of fit on EP performance and generalize the results.
The growth of financial technology is a marked trend as Price Waterhouse Coopers observes fintech as 'a dynamic segment at the intersection of the financial services and technology sectors where technology-focused start-ups and new market entrants innovate the products and services currently provided by the traditional financial services industry'. 1 Fintech reaches into many areas of financial services, from products to services and markets, 2 and many aspects could be poised to be 'disruptive innovations', which, in Bower and Christensen's framework, 3 refer to the creation of new markets and value networks that eventually disrupt existing markets and value networks, displacing established market leaders and alliances. Fintech in payment innovations seems promising in revolutionising the way we pay and how money is transferred.
This article argues that the regulatory steers in the recent EU Sustainable Disclosure and Taxonomy Regulations rely heavily on the outworking of market-based governance to meet public interest goals in sustainable finance. Hence, additional work in sustainability metrics development that informs the investment sector of sustainable performance in companies would be of key importance. This article argues that there remain gaps in EU leadership for governing metrics development, and suggests that EU-level governance can be designed appropriately, especially in a multi-stakeholder manner, for metrics development and in relation to key information intermediaries in this space.
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This paper aims to bring together two areas seemingly far apart in finance-the world of sustainable and social finance and the largely unregulated markets in initial coin offerings (ICOs). Insights of cross-fertilisation can be derived to deal with a question that sustainable and social finance has struggled with, viz, the scaling up of such finance by fund-raising in markets rather than through institutions or intermediaries. 1 We see the underlying technology that has powered ICOs to be relevant for the scaling up of marketization in sustainable and social finance, but will argue for a new regulatory approach in order to support the market revolution we advocate. The gaps in finance for sustainable and social needs are well-canvassed. These gaps are largely due to the slow pace in successful marketization of such finance, perceived to be often incompatible with the needs and requirements of investors in conventional markets. We offer a proposal to scale up the marketization of sustainable and social finance, by building on insights derived from the controversial ICO markets. We argue that ICO markets hold insights for transforming sustainable and social finance into a different asset class altogether, and the application of these insights may greatly increase the marketization potential of such finance. In this proposal we move away from treating sustainable and social finance as securities or securitised assets, and propose regulatory reforms to support such a new asset class. These regulatory reforms move away from a merely incremental approach that is focused on encouraging conventional investors to diversify their portfolios to include sustainable and social finance. In this analysis, we are not seeking to fit sustainable or social finance into ICOs or suggest that they should take advantage of the hitherto unregulated ICO markets. We are also keenly aware of the nascent efforts in regulatory treatment of ICOs, especially in relation to the extension of securities regulation over ICOs by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. We argue that policy-makers would miss the innovative and transformative elements in ICOs if an approach is forced upon ICOs to submit to existing regulatory regimes for securities and commodities. We take a different approach that breaks away from the conventional mould, arguing that sustainable and social finance can be transformed into a new asset class with the help of technology. Such a new asset class would have expanded market appeal as well. This result will however crucially require the support of new regulatory policy. In taking this approach, we accept the enormous financing potential of private markets, albeit in areas of sustainable and social finance that may deliver public goods. 2 The public interest in the outcomes of sustainable and social finance would be optimally met by drawing upon
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