Abstract:Purpose: To describe the factors that facilitate the adoption of e-business in firms. To go in deep on the factors, resources and capabilities that need to be present in those firms seeking to improve their levels of e-business adoption.Design/methodology/approach: Analysis of the literature involving the main theories on business administration, and more specifically, on those related to technology innovation (TI) and information systems (IS), as applicable to the organizational factors that explain the adoption of e-business.Findings: It identifies three main sources of influence: a first group covers the characteristics of the actual firm, which refer to the organisation's specific features: firm size, the backing of top management, expected benefit, age, the level of human capital, and international projection. A second group of factors includes technology-related characteristics. The third group contains all those aspects in the environment that may affect the firm's attitude to e-business. Research limitations/implications:The chosen variables play significant role following a review of the studies on the subject, but not all potential ones have been included. The variables have been chosen in view of the large number of studies that have reported conclusive results.-547-Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management -http://dx

En este artículo se hace una revisión de varios modelos teóricos que han buscado caracterizar a la organización que aprende. A partir de ellos, se han identifi- cado coincidencias significativas en atributos como la existencia de una visión compar- tida, el liderazgo facilitador del aprendizaje, la apertura mental y la experimentación, el pensamiento sistémico, el trabajo en equipo y la comunicación y la integración del conocimiento. Se plantean algunos factores organizativos claves para el desarrollo de estos atributos.

Purpose: Provide empirical validation of the model developed by García-Moreno, García-Moreno, Nájera-Sánchez and Pablos-Heredero (2016) on the factors influencing the adoption of e-business in firms.Design/methodology/approach: Consideration is given to the method for measuring each one of the variables included in the model. Use has been made of the e-Business Watch database, which contains measures for the theoretical model's three categories: firm, technology, and environment. Multinomial logistic regression models have been provided. Findings:The variables included have revealed significant statistical relationships for the model in question, although the intensity of the relationships differs. The variables related to the environment also reveal statistically significant relationships, whereby the attitude of trading partners appears to have a relevant and growing impact on e-business adoption.Research limitations/implications: Data come from just one database: the e-Business Watch database/enriched data from alternative databases could be included. Practical implications:The infrastructure of information and communications technologies (ICTs) is confirmed to be a determining factor in e-business development. Nevertheless, the effect of competitor rivalry has a more erratic influence that is encapsulated in a significant relationship in intermediate models, with a sharper increase in the likelihood of being in the category of customer-focused firms, and less internally focused. Social implications:The human capital linked to ICTs is a driving force behind the adoption of these practices. Albeit with a more moderate effect, note should also be taken of the capacity for entering into relationships with third parties within the scope of ICTs, with significant effects that become more robust as they are tested in models that seek to explain the probability of recording higher levels of e-business adoption.Originality/value: The article presents a first empirical analysis to apply the previous developed model published in this journal in 2016.These strata involve a quota of 10% for large enterprises (>250 employees), 30% for medium-sized enterprises (50-249 employees), 25% for small enterprises (10-49 employees), and 35% for microenterprises (< 10 employees).Once the data had been collected from the survey, the next step involved analysing the most appropriate ones for measuring each one of the model's variables. This meant choosing the questions that referred to each variable, analysing each one's suitability for achieving the corresponding goal. Table 1 lists the survey questions used for drawing up the model's measures. Measuring the Model's VariablesThe dependent variable is e-business adoption. A literature review reveals different ways of measuring e-business adoption. Zhu, Kraemer and Xu (2006) measure the concept through an aggregate index: whether the firm has used the internet for each one of the seven activities in the value chain. These seven elements range from marketing, sales and after-sales servic...

The sharing economy is changing the way customers perceive businesses and making traditional companies face new challenges. Many outmoded companies have decided to embrace these changes either by creating their own sharing platforms or by acquiring an already existing one. This paper is an initial attempt to shed light on the reasons behind mergers and acquisitions involving at least one sharing platform. We conduct an in-depth analysis of M&As over the period 2012–2019 with a sample of 108 operations, covering countries all around the world. Our analysis reveals how important and commonplace these operations are becoming, and how widely spread sharing platforms are. The paper also shows how traditional companies are dealing with these new competitors and how sharing companies need the specific knowledge provided by established companies with outmoded approaches.

Sharing Economy platforms have expanded their operations all around the globe at an unexpected rate. Due to its “asset-lite” nature, traditional internationalisation theories may not be able to fully explain or predict their expansion patterns. This lack of theoretical background puts at risk the phenomenon’s future and stops traditional companies from coming up with a solid plan to compete against platforms. To ease the creation of a Sharing Economy internationalisation paradigm, this paper intends to review the existing research regarding the internationalisation of sharing platforms as well as the applicability of existing theories. Through a systematic literature review, the existing research was reviewed, and afterwards, internationalisation theories and their distinct factors extracted were noted to address the applicability of these within the singularities of the sharing phenomenon. This classification of factors was done according to the exiting literature in the field. After this research, we can confirm the lack of explanatory power of traditional theories regarding sharing platforms and confirm the insufficient research regarding these operations. We propose a list of factors that should be considered for future research as a guideline for the further development of the Sharing Economy internationalisation theory. Additionally, the factors classification is tested upon the case of the internationalisation of Blablacar, the most extensive carpooling network operating, to check if the theoretical and the practical approaches converge.