Abstract

Abstract: In this paper, we present a research framework that tackles a promising area of e-Business largely neglected before, namely the lateral cooperation of firms from two different industries that interconnect their business processes by means of electronic integration. We refer to this kind of e-Business cooperation as ‘Value Chain Crossing ’ (VCC) and explore, as an exemplary application domain, the integration of financial processes in non-banks and financial service providers. To support our research proposal, we provide exploratory findings from an empirical survey accompanied by a series of case studies, which indicate that research in this area of e-Business is worthwhile to be conducted. We not only identified empirical evidence for a large potential of VCC but also found substantial inhibitors for the adoption of this idea. Keywords: Business Process Outsourcing; BPO; Value Chain Crossing; VCC; innovation adoption; lateral cooperation.

Citations