Title: The contribution of human resources to e-commerce capability and business performance: a structural equation modelling

Authors: Muhammad Jehangir; P.D.D. Dominic; Alamgir Khan; Naseebullah

Addresses: Department of Computer and Information Science, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750, Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia. ' Department of Computer and Information Science, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750, Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia. ' Department of Management Sciences, Sarhad University Peshawar, 2280, KPK, Pakistan. ' Department of Computer and Information Science, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750, Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia

Abstract: E-commerce (EC) not only holds the opportunities for business growth but also posses the challenges. These challenges have a significant impact on EC success. By examining drivers of business performance in EC from a firm's resource perspective, the author conceptualises three antecedents of firm's human resources that are critical for business performance in EC-based business: managerial expertise, top management support and learning capability. Defining EC capability by firm's human resources it is expected that EC have a significant contribution to business performance (financial and non-financial performance). In this paper, we have proposed a conceptual framework to find out the human resource attributes and its contribution in developing firm's EC capability which lead to better performance. In effect this research provides a checklist for managers to utilise the human resources and redesign their strategies for the successful EC technology implementation and usage.

Keywords: e-commerce; electronic commerce; Malaysia; adoption barriers; critical success factors; financial performance; non-financial performance; human resources; business performance; structural equation modelling; managerial expertise; top management support; learning capability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2012.048888

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2012 Vol.11 No.2, pp.148 - 161

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article