La soberanía en conexión con la guerra y el estado de excepción

T he DTI pro d u ced six annual reports bench m ark in g U K enterp rises ag ain st several other countries. T hese reports have been useful in co n sid erin g the use o f e-business by enterprises. H o w ev er since the 2000 report there has been lim ited separate reporting o f S M E s’ responses, and the reports used the rather d eterm in istic e-ad o p tio n ladder as the basis o f com p ariso n for different technologies. Im portantly the latest study for 2002 used data collected b etw een A pril and June, w hich overlapped w ith the a u th o r’s survey research that addressed sim ilar issues (D TI 2002). N otable findings include a red u ctio n in the level o f c o n n ectiv ity b y S M E s betw een 2001 and 2002, F igure 2.10. H o w e v er several o ther

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sim ilar countries had experienced sim ilar declines, w ith lack o f use b ein g the m ain reason given.

Figure 2.10. UK SMEs with Internet connections (DTI 1999; 2000; 2001; 2002) 200000 150000 100000 50000 1---1---1---r 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

T his m ost recent D TI report (2002) attem pted to m easure the ex ten t to w hich all businesses w ere en g ag in g in IC T w hich could transform their business p rocesses and relationships by scoring d ifferen t e-business technologies. T he report ranked the U K fourth (44), behind G erm an y (52), Sw eden (48) and US (47) w ith the low est m ean score b eing 29. T his represents an attem pt to recognise the com plexity o f e-business en g ag em en t but did not report SMEs separately.

A n o th er recent U K -based benchm arking study took a m ore critical view o f e-business engagem ent (B ooz A llen H am ilton 2002). The report proposed an ‘e-eco n o m y fra m ew o rk ’ in cluding m arket, political and infrastructural factors across g o v ern m en t, citizen and

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com pared against Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and US. The report ranked the UK fourth in term o f the business category (behind G erm any, Sweden and US) and com m ented favourably on the U K ’s progress generally. H ow ever concerns were raised, particularly about SMEs, regarding the w illingness o f businesses to trade online and noted that this decline was prom inent in the UK. Interestingly the report identified five policy trends including the facilitation o f online B2B interaction giving exam ples in A ustralia and Italy. In both cases governm ent agencies took leading roles in enabling SM Es to engage in higher com plexity e-business applications recognising the aggregations already present w ithin the business market. For exam ple an A ustralian governm ent initiative provided grants to develop com m on standards across industries and, im portantly for this thesis, to bring w hole industries together through collaborative online projects. O ver 80 awards w ere made for such projects, including: a textile supply chain project to allow production levelling and supply chain optim isation for SM Es; a collaborative B2B solution for SM Es in the mining industry to allow the exchange o f transactional data, docum ents and messages; and a small appliance industry e-com m erce project com prising retailers, wholesalers and suppliers who traditionally operated in isolation (NOIE 2003). In these examples the governm ent acted as a catalyst by funding projects to existing aggregations dominated by SM Es and offered strong supporting evidence o f em ergence o f e-aggregation applications, identified in this thesis.

In addition to internationally focused studies there have been several initiatives to conduct research into specific industry sectors, including over 60 D TI ‘sectoral im pact studies’ (DTI 2003), w hich ranged from the aerospace to ceramic and from construction to footw ear sectors. W hilst these studies included large com panies they indicated different levels o f e-business uptake between sectors. The EC E-Business W atch study highlighted

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variable adoption o f higher com plexity application, such as CRM and SCM , between different sectors. ‘ICT services’ and ‘banking and leasing’ showed higher adoption rates at 42 percent and 39 percent respectively com pared to ‘chem ical industries’ and ‘food, beverages and tobacco’ at 23 percent and 14 percent respectively (EC2003). Over 20 o f the DTI studies to date have been reviewed in order to identify key findings from the individual studies (Hawkins and Prencipe 2000; Clegg 2001). Both reports recognised the increasing levels o f connectivity by all businesses but noted the lack o f evidence o f uptake o f higher com plexity e-business applications. Concerns w ere expressed regarding the ability to com pare data across the studies and the need for longitudinal research.

The concerns expressed by both Hawkins and Prencipe, and Clegg serve to highlight the difficulties in com parisons both across industry sectors and w ithin SM Es generally. There are two w orrying assum ptions within m uch o f the, m ostly governm ent sponsored, research, nam ely that SM Es can be m eaningfully discussed as a hom ogeneous w hole and that e-business adoption per say is a good thing and results in gain for the adopters. Clearly the form er is dangerous and the latter far to simplistic. The thesis attem pts to address both these concerns by firstly recognising that enterprises, regardless o f size, m ay group around a business activity and secondly that the presence o f a perceived business need or gain is an im portant factor. Furtherm ore it is im portant to acknowledge from the outset that for some enterprises, o f any size, it is simply not desirable or feasible to engage in e-business technologies and that this non-adoption decision m ay not result in any m aterial social or econom ic disadvantage. The thesis how ever specifically seeks to investigate the phenom enon o f aggregations o f SMEs engaging in higher com plexity e-business applications.

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This relative failure o f SM Es to engage in higher com plexity e-business applications was unexpected by both academics and policym akers alike. It w as anticipated that the e-practices o f large organisation w ould m igrate and influence the behaviour o f SMEs. In selected instances, such as the aerospace, construction and m otor industries, there is some em erging evidence that this is occurring but it is clearly not w idespread. Booz Allen H am ilton noted that in A ustralia the Inform ation Technology On-Line (ITOL) grants had achieved success by funding “business services that are focused on specific industry clusters o f SM Es” (2002: 124). They cited an exam ple o f the design and construction portal focused on the w hole industry, which was supported by the M aster Builders Association. M any o f the projects included key interm ediaries, such as industrial and governm ent bodies, as consortium members. From a theory perspective the issues are significant and suggest that our understanding o f small firm behaviour and in particular their adoption o f ICT, either alone or w ithin sector aggregations, is too limited. To date w ell cited research on ICT adoption by SMEs (e.g. Cragg and K ing 1993; Iacovou et al.y

1995) is characterised by a user perspective and by a focus on the technical or organisational factors underpinning adoption, rather than the influence o f application com plexity on the adoption decision. In all cases such research takes as the unit o f analysis the individual enterprise, and then combines the results to draw conclusions.

The above clearly suggests that a discussion o f application com plexity is im portant in the context o f engaging SMEs. A proposed taxonom y o f application com plexity, w hich goes beyond the U K G overnm ent’s rather linear classification suggested above, is shown in Table 2.2, together w ith exam ples o f applications. U sing this proposed classification the m ost recently available survey data (EC2002; DTI 2003) w as analysed to show the level o f e-business engagem ent by SMEs in terms o f application com plexity, Figure 2.11.

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Figure 2.11. SMEs e-business engagement (updated from Lockett & Brown 2001)

100% EC EU □ EC UK B DTI UK ■ UK Average 75% o) 50% n a c UJ 25%

Very Low Low Medium High Very High

Application Com plexity

In sum m ary, the analysis in F igure 2.11, suggests that m ost S M E s ap p ear co m fo rtab le w ith e-m ail and w eb access (low er com plexity), are tentative w ith the use o f the Internet for online b u y in g and selling (m edium com plexity), but have little o r no en g ag em en t in the high o r v e ry high com p lex ity applications, such as e-m arketplaces, su p p ly chains or inter- o rg anisational co llab o rativ e netw orks. T his is despite the early pro m ise o f A S Ps facilitating such access to com plex applications. T ypically the sm all nu m b er o f enterprises engaged in the m ore com plex e-business applications ap p ear to do so for tw o m ain reasons. F irstly th ey form part o f an existing supply chain, m any o f w hich w ill have had previous EDI links, such as transport-based SM Es supporting su perm arket logistics. S econdly, there are those com p an ies that are required to do so by larger co m panies as the latter take steps to m igrate to w eb -b ased supply netw orks - the autom obile and defence industries being current exam ples. H ence the trend in Figure 2.11 is not m erely surp risin g in term s o f the early expectatio n s o f engagem ent, but raises the im portant q u estion o f w hat this relative

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lack o f engagem ent will m ean not only for SM Es but also the larger organisations that have significant num bers o f SM Es in their supplier networks.

In sharp contrast to SM Es was the experience o f larger organisations in their adoption o f e-business applications. Frequently the e-business agenda has been provider-led w ith large software com panies (e.g. Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP) supplying and developing w ith these organisations systems such as Supply Chain M anagem ent (SCM ) and Custom er Relationship M anagem ent (CRM ) which support core business processes including planning, production, distribution and sales. The provision o f these so called ‘critical applications’, m ost recently through web-based technologies, have been central to the rapid adoption o f e-business by large enterprises. Critical applications are so called because they purport to offer a route to ‘best practice’ that firms find difficult to ignore (SAP 2002; Oracle 2003). This isn ’t to suggest that provider-led innovation isn ’t problem atic - it can be especially w hen the im portance o f the role o f the user is underestim ated (Swan and Clark 1992; R obertson et al., 1996). In reality the com bination o f a high level o f im plem entation support from the provider, together w ith user com m itm ent, IS experience and clarity o f their ow n organisational processes and priorities can m itigate the im plem entation risk. But such a partnership is resource-rich on both parties. For the provider this can be recovered in their pricing structures; for the user their size facilitates access to the necessary resources. N either o f these options are norm ally available to SMEs. The intense interest, by both governments and service providers, in the drivers and barriers to e-com m erce and e-business adoption by SM Es has resulted in m uch quantitative research both at national and international levels. This research is exam ined in the next section.

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