How do IT Competence, Organizational Agility and Entrepreneurial Actions Coevolve: The Case of Entrepreneurial Etailers on Ecommerce Platforms

Internet and IT have re-shaped the strategy logic of contemporary organizations. The new logic emphasizes business opportunity leveraging through constantly evolving entrepreneurial actions. The required business capabilities underlying such strategic logic, including organizational agility and IT competence, have also to be built and co-evolved. Based on Sambamurthy et al. [1] conceptual framework and ten case studies of Small and Medium sized etailers on third party platform, this research explains what are entrepreneurial actions, enablers of organizational capabilities and IT competence (including IT capability and digital options) for SME etailers, as well as their evolution path and coevolution mechanisms. This research advances the literature by providing empirical evidence of the new strategic logic of internet firms as suggested by Sambamurthy et al., and systematically addresses the adaptive co-evolutionary mechanisms through real options and adaptive learning perspectives.