E-business strategy: how companies are shaping their manufacturing and supply chain through the Internet

The interest of both researchers and practitioners around the use of Internet-based took to support business processes has been quite high in the last few years. However, despite the initial enthusiastic expectations, it is still not completely clear whether these expectations have been translated into business reality. This paper explores the actual adoption of Internet technologies in supply chain processes by a large sample of European manufacturing firms participating in the IMSS survey. Four e-business strategies are identified and their relationship with contingent factors and supply chain integration mechanisms is investigated. Results show a close link between the use of Internet tools and the level of integration with customers and suppliers, thus suggesting the need to define e-business strategies in coherence with the use of traditional integration mechanisms.