Special Section: Globalization and Electronic Commerce

To gain a better understanding of the global diffusion of e-business among organizations in developed and developing countries and to investigate the relationships among e-business contexts, economic environment, and organizational adoption, we conducted a firm-level survey in two countries — the United States and China — and tested a research framework built upon the technology-organization-environment framework. Empirical data from 262 US firms and 175 Chinese firms provided evidence about the extent of organizational adoption of ebusiness. Major findings include: 1) Chinese firms lag in using e-business-related technologies, especially interorganizational technologies; 2) US firms make more extensive use of the Internet; and 3) government regulation plays a more important role in China than in the US. Moreover, using structural equation modelling, we further teased out four adoption facilitators in general — technology competence, enterprise integration, competition intensity, and regulatory environment. These factors played different roles in different economic environments. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major results and implications. Keyword: Internet, electronic business, adoption, innovation diffusion, global environment, cross-country study, technologyorganization-environment framework A u t h o r s Sean Xu ([email protected]) is a doctoral student of Information Systems in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on e-business adoption/diffusion in a global environment and the business value of IT and e-business. Kevin Zhu ([email protected]) received his PhD from Stanford University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Information Systems in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on e-business, global electronic markets, strategic IT investments, and economic/organizational impacts of IT. Jennifer L. Gibbs ([email protected]) is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO), at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on social impacts of information technology in global teams and organizations. She is currently researching global e-commerce diffusion across numerous countries. Global Technology, Local Adoption: A Cross-Country Investigation of Internet Adoption by Companies in the United States and China SEAN XU, KEVIN ZHU, AND JENNIFER GIBBS