The Adoption of E‐Business by Organizations in China: An Institutional Perspective

Abstract

The Chinese e‐business industry has a number of unusual features. Institutional factors such as strong nationalism, the state's entrenchment in the economy, political cognitive and political normative factors, regulative uncertainty, the role of professional associations, and the importance of business and social networks are deeply reflected in China's e‐business development pattern. We argue that by approaching the Chinese e‐business industry from the standpoint of institutional theory, we can capture these complex factors facilitating and hindering China's rapidly growing e‐business industry. We thus employ an institutional perspective to explain the Chinese e‐business landscape. In addition to advancing research on e‐business in China, this paper also highlights several directions for future inquiry and implications for managers and policymakers.

Keywords:

• China
• e‐business
• institutions
• legitimacy
• guanxi
• isomorphism

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank two Electronic Markets peer reviewers for their feedback, which drastically improved the quality of this paper.

Notes

1. At present, there are more than 150 members, most of which are organizations (http://www.isc.org.cn/English/).

2. Archeology is the study of ancient societies and cultures. Paleoanthropology is the study of the human fossil record.

3. A feasible allocation is said to be Pareto optimal if there exists no other feasible allocations that make at least one person better off without making any individual worse off.

4. China's attempt in the mid‐1990s to introduce its CD standard, Super Video CD, to the world also faced foreign market resistance as well as a lack of strong consumer support within the country.