Craig Knight, Asia Pacific Digital Business and Customer Services Manager of Eastman Chemical Company, was given a mandate to sell Eastman's philosophy for an integrated electronic supply chain, otherwise known as the Integrated System Solution (ISS), to its business partners in the region, and to encourage adoption. Having invested in a state-of-the-art technical architecture that would support interconnectivity with all parties along the supply chain, Eastman was keen to realise the full benefits to be gained from an integrated e-supply chain on a global scale. Following numerous rounds of discussion with key business partners in the Asia Pacific region, some progress had been made. Nagase & Co., Ltd. of Japan had agreed to adopt ISS connections with Eastman, but had some reservations regarding the extent of integration. Although the benefits of integration were proven, suppliers, customers, distributors and other interested parties were faced with numerous limitations and considerations that would have significant implications on their established business processes and even the shaping of their corporate strategy. Adoption was not a simple choice. Craig understood these shortcomings and was making every effort to ease the adoption process by identifying the longer-term benefits to Nagase and other business partners of applying XML technology to their businesses.
Despite the high level of interest in the role of governments in building national information infrastructure (NII) as a source of competitive advantage, it is still not clear how major information technology initiatives can help leverage national economies into the global marketplace. In light of the recent rollout of one of the world's largest electronic commerce initiatives, we examine the role of private-public partnerships in the success of such initiative in Hong Kong. Furthermore, we trace the 3 stages of the project-development, implementation, and competitive entrenchment-to identify the difficulties and challenges encountered and how these were overcome. By drawing some comparisons with the Singapore approach, we identify the kind of government involvement appropriate to spur on national competitiveness. We show that in building the NII, the dual aspects of private-sector leadership and government involvement are mutually reinforcing. Government intervention is necessary in creating the initial supply push, whereas the demand pull engendered by the market is critical for leveraging the NII as a platform for national competitiveness. The ramification of the study for other countries is discussed. economic impacts (BA01), governments (BC01), interorganizational systems (HA07)
JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMPUTING AND ELECTRONIC COMMERCE 11(4), 285-303 (2001)Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Ali F. Farhoomand,
The company famous for transporting goods from anywhere to anywhere around the globe has used its impressive information infrastructure to expand into a channel logistics business.
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