The role of technological know-how in c-commerce success

Collaborative commerce (c-commerce), involving the use of technology to enable and facilitate inter-organizational processes, is an increasingly important area for technology innovation and investment, and has become a backbone of modern business activity. A vital basis for enhancing the likelihood of c-commerce success is an understanding of the factors that contribute to that success. This research studies one set of such factors: the facets of an organization's technological know-how for performing inter-firm collaboration. It builds on prior research that finds a link between organizational know-how and successful inter-firm collaboration to develop hypotheses about the relationship between an organization's technological know-how for performing inter-organizational collaboration and the success of such collaboration. These hypotheses are tested using data collected from survey respondents who have led c-commerce initiatives. We find support for the proposition that there are aspects of an organization's technological-collaborative know-how that have a significant positive relationship with the firm's c-commerce success.