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Today, most organisations are using packaged software for their key business processes. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, customer relationship management and electronic commerce systems enable organisations to improve their focus of using information systems to support their operational and financial goals. This article argues that the need to integrate these packaged software applications with each other as well as with existing or legacy business applications drives the need for a standardised integration architecture to more flexibly implement new business processes across different organisations and applications. To illustrate the components of such an architecture, a case study undertaken at the Robert Bosch Group provided necessary empirical evidence. The Robert Bosch Group has evaluated different enterprise application integration (EAI) systems to achieve a standardised integration architecture. The article describes a reference architecture and criteria for the classification of EAI systems which are derived from different integration approaches.

The pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. For example, institutional regulations that have been in place for decades are being removed and competitive pressures force pharmaceutical companies to adopt customer‐oriented strategies. Information technology (IT) is a traditional enabler in this industry for the interaction with suppliers, wholesalers and pharmacies. This paper shows that internet portals yield new opportunities in accessing key customer segments, such as physicians and patients. The central message is that shaping these customer‐oriented systematic methodologies is merely a technological undertaking. Changes are required regarding strategy, processes as well as the systems architecture. To develop an integrated customer relationship management strategy this research draws on elements from established business redesign. The emphasis is on portals that bundle services for the patient's and physician's customer processes.

The paper pursues an action research approach where researchers have been involved in project work. The overall architecture framework has been generalized from projects with nine international companies between 2000 and 2002. One of these companies, the case of Pharma Corp., one of the largest pharma companies worldwide, is detailed in this paper. It shows how the three main architecture views strategy, process and system are used for the development of a customer‐oriented portal strategy.

Portals that support business processes have implications on the technical and business architecture alike. Existing architectures have an emphasis on individual architecture views, but rarely cover the “whole picture”. This paper argues that alignment is necessary of at least three architectures: the business architecture positions, the portal regarding the target customer segments and the (electronic) intermediaries. The process architecture identifies customer processes for each segment and derives portal services, which may also be sourced from external service providers. Thus, their configuration requires the alignment of all levels which are usually specified separately.

The architecture framework presents a first step towards a systematic methodology for re‐engineering customer relationships. It may support the project work in companies and stimulate future research towards inter‐organizational business process redesign.

Electronic support of internal supply chains for direct or production goods has been a major element during the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that has taken place since the late 1980s. However, supply chains to indirect material suppliers were not usually included due to low transaction volumes, low product values and low strategic importance of these goods. Dedicated information systems for streamlining indirect goods supply chains have emerged since the late 1990s and subsequently have faced a broad diffusion in practice. The concept of these e‐procurement solutions has also been described broadly in the literature. However, studies on how companies use these e‐procurement solutions and what factors are critical to their implementation are only emerging. This research aims to explore the introduction of e‐procurement systems and their contribution to the management of indirect goods supply chain.

Chooses a two‐part qualitative approach. First, summarizes the results of a benchmarking study that was conducted by a consortium of 12 multinational companies. During the benchmarking process 120 questionnaires were distributed, ten phone‐based interviews were conducted, and finally five successful practice companies were selected and analyzed in detail. Second, draws together the success factors identified in the benchmarking study and maps them against the successful practice companies.

Although e‐procurement has substantially streamlined the procurement and coordination processes for indirect goods, many companies operate multiple e‐procurement solutions. For integrated procurement solutions, the paper recognizes the need of an overall procurement strategy and organization, an alignment of various e‐procurement solutions along the procurement process and the need for integrated system architectures. Companies also have to realize that a no standardized e‐procurement solutions exists and that important success factors are “non‐technical” in nature.

This paper presents a first step towards a systematic analysis of factors that may guide companies in the implementation of e‐procurement solutions. Besides providing a direct contribution to the project work in companies it may stimulate further research in e‐procurement success factors.

Owing to the dramatic rise of FinTech credit in the financial sector, this study describes its knowledge and intellectual structure and paves the way for future research.

The study employs citation analysis, keyword analysis, co-author analysis, co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling on 268 peer-reviewed articles published during 2010–2021 and extracted from the Web of Science database.

Research on FinTech credit has picked up momentum from 2016, with majority contributions from China, followed by UK and USA. International Journal of Bank Marketing is found to be the most productive journal. Co-citation analysis reveals that past studies have focused on three dominant themes, viz. (a) factors that influence user intention to adopt technological products and services (b) borrowers' and lenders' characteristics that impact fund-raising in FinTech credit platforms and (c) evolution of FinTech market over the years. Bibliographic coupling reveals that recent trends in FinTech credit include (a) impact of emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data on financial system, (b) factors that encourage consumers to adopt the FinTech products and services, (c) mechanisms by which FinTechs have transformed formal credit markets, (d) factors that lead to successful fundraising in FinTech platforms and (e) critical perspectives on digital lending platforms.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is a pioneering study undertaking an exhaustive analysis of FinTech credit as a research area. The study offers valuable insights on potential topics of research in FinTech credit domain like investigating Balance Sheet Lending Model, investigating the impact of FinTechs on financial system, and new markets by collaborating with scholars of other regions.

This paper aims to review the progression of the pharmaceutical industry through the lens of government legislation in the USA. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of pharmaceutical marketing practices while providing direction for emerging pricing and promotional approaches.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of pharmaceutical marketing practices through an exhaustive review of the literature. Further, suggestions are made based on emerging marketing techniques found in the literature.

Changes in government legislation will continue to play a significant role in promotional activities of the pharmaceutical industry. This study identifies specific pricing and promotional tools the pharmaceutical industry can use in response to these emerging changes. Specific actions such as enhancing public image, reconfiguring sales forces, outsourcing and optimizing the pricing mix are suggested.

This paper presents clear guidelines for managers by affording applicable practical tools to offset changes posed by government legislation.

This paper seeks to fill a gap in research surrounding pricing and promotion in the pharmaceutical industry. Further, this paper offers concrete pricing and promotional approaches for pharmaceutical management.

Blockchain possesses the potential to disrupt and reshape a plethora of industries in the next decade. However, blockchain adoption rates in technology developed countries, such as Ireland, are relatively low. Motivated by blockchain’s potential to transform sociotechnical systems, the lack of systematic inquiry pertaining to blockchain studies from an information system perspective, the authors propose the following research question: “How do organizational factors influence blockchain adoption in organizations based in a developed country?” Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the impact of organizational factors on the adoption of blockchain and the adoption of blockchain in companies based in Ireland.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted, and the methods of qualitative content analysis were used to identify the most important technology–organization–environment (TOE) blockchain adoption factors. Organizational factors are often viewed as the most significant determinants of IT innovation adoption in organizations. Consequently, using a multiple-case study of 20 companies based in Ireland, the authors investigate how the top three organizational factors identified from the blockchain literature affected these companies decision to adopt or not adopt blockchain.

The literature review on blockchain adoption identified specific technological, organizational and environmental factors. Furthermore, the case study findings identified three patterns: top management support and organizational readiness are enablers for blockchain adoption, and large companies are more likely to adopt blockchain than small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors explain these patterns by examining the nature of blockchain and the characteristics of Ireland as a developed country. Practical and scientific contributions are also presented.

This study makes several important scientific contributions. First, the findings revealed that top management support and organizational readiness are significant enablers of blockchain adoption. Ireland is recognized as a technology developed country; however, the findings in relation to top management support contradict existing IT adoption literature pertaining to developed countries. Second, previous IT innovation adoption literature suggests that organizations size has a positive influence on a company’s IT innovation adoption process. This study demonstrates that large organizations are more likely to not only adopt blockchain but are also more likely to conduct increased levels of blockchain research and development activities. Finally, and most significantly, the authors identified several patterns, which relate specifically to Ireland as a developed country that influenced the findings. These findings could hold particular relevance to governments and organizations of other developed countries in terms of accelerating blockchain adoption.

The findings about the low level of blockchain awareness and the lack of information pertaining to viable business use cases indicate that the Irish government could play a more significant role in promoting the benefits of blockchain technologies. Further, the findings could also encourage IT providers to formulate enhanced strategies aimed at disseminating information pertaining to blockchain technologies. Second, the positive influence of top management support and organizational readiness, particularly about core competencies, on blockchain adoption suggests that equipping managers with the requisite knowledge and skills will be crucial in adopting these IT innovations. Finally, organizations who adopted blockchain used cloud-based blockchain platforms and tools to overcome the constraints of their initial low levels of organizational readiness.

This is one of the first studies to identify specific TOE blockchain adoption factors. Further, the authors examine how the three most identified organizational adoption factors impact organizations decisions to adopt blockchain. Finally, the authors discuss how the resulting three patterns identified by examining the nature of blockchain and the characteristics of Ireland as a technology developed country.

This paper aims to study the FinTech enterprises and the management theories related to this subject in a scientific way.

This study is a bibliometric study on FinTech enterprises. Its origin is a survey of 1,749 papers in 6 traditional peer-reviewed academic databases (e.g. Science Direct and Scopus) and in the “gray” literature, published by other agents and not subject to double-blind peer review. In this analysis we use three approaches: academic paper or not; journal main interest, and main purpose of the paper.

The first approach shows 45% of papers without blind review. The second approach shows no concentration on any journal. It represents no concentration on any kind of specific journal. And the third approach shows four kinds of contents in all researched papers: FinTech categorizations; FinTech related to theory of disruptive innovation; FinTech and theories of administration or economy; and finally, FinTech and regulatory and legislative aspects.

The findings identified the emergence of new research strands, precedence of studies of “gray” literature to explain the phenomenon, distribution of studies in different fields of knowledge (e.g. information technology, business and law) and lack of consensus in theories to explain the matter.

This study investigates the impact of human capital (managers' capital, employees' capital) and orientation (market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation) for accelerating the digitalization process and improving the firm performance. It also studies the role of supply chains as both direct and indirect mediators of the correlation between digitalization and business performance.

This article aims to develop an empirical study using a random sampling technique and survey data collected from 368 managers and owners of different food enterprises in Vietnam. The study adopted a methodological approach quantitatively. Analysis of the relationships and confirmatory factors was performed using structural equation modeling (SEM), a technique to evaluate the proposed relationships.

In line with expectations, the findings emphasize the impact of human capital (managers' capital, employees' capital) and orientation (market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation) for accelerating the digitalization process and the role of supply chains as both direct and indirect mediators of the correlation between digitalization and improving the firm performance, in the context of emerging markets.

This is an important investigation, according to the authors' knowledge, regarding the role of developing human capital (managers' capital, employees' capital) and orientation (market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation) as a key strategy for accelerating the digitalization process and improving the firm performance. Further, the study's novelty reinforces the role of supply chains as both direct and indirect mediators of the correlation between digitalization and business performance in the Vietnamese food companies, where a market economy is emerging.

This paper aims to investigate what motivates consumers to adopt one of the emerging mobile applications of the sharing economy, ridesharing application. Using social cognitive theory as the theoretical framework, this study develops a value adoption model to illustrate important factors that influence adoption of ridesharing applications.

Based on prior literature, a quantitative methodology was adopted using a survey questionnaire that allows for the measurement of the nine constructs contained in the hypothesized theoretical model. Data collected from a sample of 314 respondents in Beijing, China provided the foundation for the examination of the proposed relationships in the model.

First, the results indicate that self-efficacy is a fundamental factor that has a direct effect on consumers’ perceptions of value and an indirect effect on behavioral intentions. Second, the study demonstrates that functional value, emotional value and social value are critical antecedents of overall perceived value of ridesharing applications. On the other hand, learning effort and risk perception are not significant perceived costs for consumers in adopting ridesharing applications.

Although typical adopters of internet applications constitute a significant portion of younger consumers, the use of a college student sample in this study may affect the generalizability of the results.

The findings provide critical insight into consumer motivations behind adoption of ridesharing applications specifically, and for sharing economy platforms in general.

This study provides important theoretical implications for innovation adoption research through an empirical examination of the relationship between personal, environmental and behavioral factors in a framework of social cognitive theory.