Abstract

Healthcare organizations have started to make use of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce technologies in overcoming many of the challenges they face. However, healthcare executives have found it increasingly difficult to justify rising IT expenditures and are often under pressure to find a way to evaluate the contribution of their B2B e-commerce investments to business performance, as well as to find reliable ways to ensure that the business benefits from the investments are actually realized. Despite high expectations for the value of IT in healthcare, its adoption remains poorly understood and is also a relatively under-researched area. Hence, a case study approach was conducted: (1) to examine the relationships between organizational B2B e-commerce policy and strategy, organizational IT maturity, and evaluation practices and their effects on B2B e-commerce performance among Australian healthcare organizations; and (2) to develop a framework which can assist healthcare organizations in realizing B2B e-commerce benefits and satisfaction within the Australian healthcare organizations. A key contribution of this study is the development of a B2B e-commerce benefits and satisfaction framework which can be used by healthcare executives in examining the relationships between organizational B2B e-commerce policy and strategy, organizational IT maturity, IT evaluation practices, and e-commerce benefits and satisfaction.

Key words: E-commerce, healthcare, IT maturity, IT investment evaluation, benefits.