e-Procurement Assimilation: An Assessment of e-Business Capabilities and Supplier Readiness in the Australian Public Sector

As part of a larger research project whose objective was to determine the antecedent condition for e-Procurement assimilation, this paper assesses the organizational e-Business capabilities and supplier readiness in the Australian public sector. With the help of an extensive literature review and pilot study, organizational e-Business capabilities and supplier e- Business readiness factors were identified, a research model was developed and hypotheses were formulated. Based on the Resource-based View of the firm, it is argued that organizational e-Business capabilities such as authentication, interoperability, legal framework, open standards, and security and privacy and also supplier e-Business readiness factors positively impact the transactional and strategic assimilation of e-Procurement. A nationwide web-based survey of Procurement/e-Procurement professionals in the Australian public sector is in the final stage of completion at the time of writing of this paper and analysis of the complete set of data will be presented at the conference. Interested readers can also obtain the results of this study by emailing one of the authors of the paper.