Information sharing and business systems leveraging in supply chains: An empirical investigation of one web-based application

Web-based supply chain applications promise to provide information sharing capabilities that will enhance the participating organizations’ information capabilities and business benefits. We performed an empirical study of a sophisticated Web-based supply chain application to determine the effect of such information sharing and business systems leveraging on business benefits. We also examined the importance of relational concurrence (i.e., shared business interests among supply chain partners), as an antecedent to both information sharing and business systems leveraging. Our work showed that both information sharing and business system leveraging provided important business benefits and that relational concurrence was only marginally related to information sharing and not at all related to business systems leveraging, limiting the significance attributed to this factor in prior research on inter-organizational systems.