Toward a unified view of electronic commerce, electronic business, and collaborative commerce: a knowledge management approach

Abstract

M.J. Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, USAElectronic commerce (e-commerce) has become a major factor in determining the futuresurvival or success of organizations. The definitions of e-commerce are many and diverse. Inaddition to these, there are varied notions of electronic business (e-business) and collaborativecommerce (c-commerce). Here, we structure the existing five-fold e-commerce taxonomy toaccommodate various e-business and c-commerce perspectives as well. From this, wesynthesize an integrated over-arching definition of e-business. However, the result has alimitation. To overcome it, we advance a knowledge-management view that explicitlyrecognizes e-business as being based on e-knowledge: processes and technologies formanaging knowledge. We contend that the knowledge-oriented perspective of e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business is beneficial in furnishing a common, organized, and unifiedfoundation for understanding and managing electronic organizations in the knowledgee-conomy. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.INTRODUCTION