Management : Journal of Contemporary Management Issues (Jan 2003)
Management support to e-business initiatives: The Croatian experience
Abstract
After defining e-business and explaining why an evolutionary aspect of moving to e-business is required, the dimensions of e-business is defined with respect to differences between traditional business, partial, or pure e-business. Also, a model for moving to e-business is illustrated. The e-business evolving model is divided into six stages and represents an evolutionary aspect of migrating to e-business. Finally, the results of the research study on current practices in evolving e-business in the most successful Croatian companies are given. In this research, some aspects of business process innovation and e-business usage have been investigated (general e-business issues with levels of e-business usage, key objectives of participating in e-business, alignment of business strategy with e-business initiatives, initiation of e-business projects and e-business planning issues, especially e-business funding). The questionnaire was sent to 400 CEOs or CIOs in Croatian companies selected from the Register of the ‘400 Biggest’ Croatian companies which were ranked according to their 2001 annual revenue and which were most likely to represent the structure of the Croatian economy. Although they represent less than 1% of the total number of registered companies in Croatia, the sampled companies hold 73% of the equity capital of the whole Croatian economy, they contribute with 65% in the total Croatian economy’s export balance and they employ 37% of the total number of people employed in Croatia.
