Determining the factors of partner selection – a case of the 'Bridging the Digital Divide of SMEs Project'

Tzong-Ru Lee, Chien-Wei Chen and Agnieszka Dadura

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2011, vol. 7, issue 3, 286-308

Abstract: In this paper, we focus on the partner selection criteria of the 12 e-business sub-contractor agencies and ISPs in the mentioned project. Through literature review and interview with the experts who join this project in practice, we develop two models to deal with our two research questions, which are: 1) What are the selection criteria for the 12 e-business sub-contractor agencies finding the cooperation partners (for Model 1)?; 2) What are the selection factors that drive ISPs to find the capable SMEs implementing e-business (for Model 2)? Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is adopted to analyse the research data in these two models. As a result we name the most influential factors and based on them give suggestions to both SMEs as well as ISPs on how to meet those selection criteria. We believe this research can be a practical guidance to small businesses, ISPs as well as governments wanting to implement similar programmes promoting e-commerce.

Keywords: partner selection; business partners; e-business adoption; electronic business; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; fuzzy AHP; analytical hierarchy process; digital divide; sub-contractors; Taiwan; world wide web; internet service providers; ISPs; selection criteria; selection factors; electronic commerce; e-commerce; business information systems. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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