Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to construct a new e-commerce innovation and adoption model that takes into account various stages of e-commerce adoption (interactive, non-interactive and stabilised) and covers technological, organisational and environmental factors. This was tested using data collected from manufacturing and service companies in Saudi Arabia (SA) to reveal inhibitors and catalysts for e-commerce adoption.Design/methodology/approach: – This study uses new data from surveys from 202 companies and then uses exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling for analyses.Findings: – This study shows that the new stage-oriented model (SOM) is valid and can reveal specific detailed nuances of e-commerce adoption within a particular setting. Surprising results show that SA is not so very different to developed western countries in respect to e-commerce adoption. However there are some important differences which are discussed in detail.Research limitations/implications: – A new SOM for e-commerce adoption is provided which may be used by other IS adoption researchers.Practical implications: – Managers responsible for the adoption of e-commerce in SA, the Middle East and beyond can learn from these findings to speed up adoption rates and make e-commerce more effective.Social implications: – This work may help spread e-commerce use throughout SA, the Middle East and to other developing nations.Originality/value: – The results add to the extremely limited number of empirical studies that has been conducted to investigate e-commerce adoption in the context of Arabic countries.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate dependencies that arise between companies during the ramp-up of production volume in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. Design/methodology/approach: An inter-company case study method has been used. Data were collected via tours of manufacturing plants, workshops and interviews from multiple tiers in a supply chain, namely, a niche EV manufacturer, as well as two of its tier-one suppliers and five of its tier-two suppliers. Findings: As production volumes increased, a more relational approach was found to be necessary in inter-company relationships. The authors’ research showed that key suppliers, in addition to providing the parts, pursued a supply chain orchestrator’s role by offering direct support and guidance to the niche EV manufacturer in designing and executing its development plans. Research limitations/implications: The resource dependence theory (RDT) is used to analyse and explain the changing dependencies throughout the planning and execution of production ramp-up. Practical implications: This study will help supply chain managers to better manage resource dependencies during production ramp-up. Originality/value: This study explores dependencies during the early stages of the production ramp-up process in the EV sector, which is in itself in the early stages of evolution. RDT is used for the first time in this context. This study has moved beyond a simple dyadic context, by providing empirical insights into the actions taken by an EV manufacturer and its suppliers, towards a multi-tier supply chain context, to better manage resource dependencies.

Discusses the necessity for the conscious recognition of the phenomenon known as the extended enterprise; this demands that product, process and supply chain design are all considered simultaneously. Structure must be given to the extended enterprise in order to understand and manage it efficaciously. The authors discuss multiple perspectives for doing this, and employ the notions of ``3-dimensional concurrent engineering'' and ``holonic thinking'' for conceiving what the structure may look like. Describes a current ``action research'' project that is investigating potential lead-time reductions within an extended enterprise's product introduction process. This aims to produce process visualisations, a framework for structuring and sychronising phases and stage-gates within the extended enterprise, and a new simulation tool which will provide a synthetic distributed hypermedia network. These deliverables will be used to play strategic ``games'' to explore problem issues within the product introduction process that belongs to the extended enterprise, develop teamwork across autonomous companies, and ultimately, contribute to the design of future extended enterprise supply chains.