Conceptual frames of reference and their influcence on E-Commerce System Development

The complexity and uncertainty that is inherent in the E-Commerce environment poses a number of challenges to the development of E-commerce applications. Key stakeholders consistently use heuristics to make sense of the challenges they face. The most pervasive of these heuristics is framing, whereby people rely on a conceptual set to organise their perceptions. This process has some benefits but it can also lead to a narrow approach, ignorance concerning important elements of the decision environment and an absolute reliance on a specialist area of knowledge. This has significant implications for coherence of effort and vision, elements crucial to the success of e-Commerce projects. This paper uses a case study, qualitative approach in order to establish whether there is evidence for the operation of the framing heuristic, particularly within the context of risk perception, within a variety of ECommerce system development environments.