Abstract
During the Web era e-procurement has witnessed a steep rise in marketplace deployment; this has been followed by a substantial number of failures. A number of larger technology providers are now left to support both small and large businesses. Flexibility has been a key enabler in supporting network evolution across a varied number of domains. The aim of this study is to investigate flexibility around marketplace evolution, success and failure. In particular, explore the inter-relationships between architectural flexibility and the evolving Web and Internet. A systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out in order to uncover the changes that have taken place over the past fifteen years. A conceptual model is produced early in the research in order to provide contextual underpinning. We employed a manual search of 5 journals. Of the 22 relevant studies, one addressed research trends around e-procurement in pharmaceutical organizations. Three addressed eprocurement in financial organizations. A number of flexibility categories are uncovered by the SLR and then used as a means to support flexible e-procurement marketplace (EPM) design and adoption, recognising EPM evolution over the volatile study period. Flexibility categories are uncovered and comprise technical, organisational, environmental and strategic (TOES) concerns.
Highlights
Considerable research has been conducted on electronic procurement marketplace (EPM) over the past fifteen years
In order to provide some context, we critically review the literature on e-procurement emarketplaces and flexibility
In this paper we use systematic literature review (SLR) to address the need for a longitudinal view in times of great volatility and in order to understand the viability of EPMs with respect to current and future flexibility
Summary
Considerable research has been conducted on electronic procurement marketplace (EPM) over the past fifteen years This topic has been a prominent feature of the information systems research landscape over this period with a rapid growth and later consolidation in marketplace numbers. Globalization, deregulation, increased competition, mergers and acquisitions, and the like all reveal organizations in transition, adapting to a continuously changing business environment [69] In this dynamic context, in order to be responsive to changes in business requirements and environments, EPMs must provide quality products, services and processes in order to gain market presence and competitive edge. Given that just over a decade of EPM research has been conducted, we argue that it is timely to take stock of the wealth of research on EPM’s understand the evolution and analyze the need for future research within this field
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