Strategic enterprise information systems for global supply chain competitiveness

Strategic enterprise information systems (SEIS) are networked and integrated information systems developed to help support corporate strategic decisions. They are sold on the basis that they can provide a competitive advantage to the organization, although prior research has demonstrated that realizing the benefits from such systems is not always easy, especially when there are multiple stakeholders involved across a supply chain, each of whom may have different interests and concerns. The purpose of this special issue is to stimulate theoretical and empirical research that enable us to better understand the circumstances in which SEIS may be involved in the transformation of organizational resources to achieve global supply chain competitiveness, while remaining sensitive to the variety of interests involved that may make consensus over strategic priorities difficult to achieve in practice.  What are the strategic implications sought for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in supply chain competitiveness? And how and why are these strategic implications realized (or not) in practice?  In what ways and how, if at all, are E‐Commerce and wireless technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies creating a paradigm shift in managing a competitive supply chain system?  How can ERP and RFID support the strategic enterprise information systems for global supply chain competitiveness?  What are the challenges that companies face with reference to SEIS implementation, especially given the variety of stakeholders involved along a supply chain? This special issue is an extension of JSIS special issues, namely, " Understanding the contextual influences on enterprise system design, implementation, use and evaluation " (JSIS 13(4) and 14(2)) edited by Professors Debra Howcroft, Sue Newell and Erica Wagner, and considers the strategic implications of ERP, E‐Commerce and RFID in global supply chain management, rather than focusing systems on design and implementation. We particularly encourage papers that take a strategic perspective, where 'strategic' can address organizational, technology, business, or policy imperatives in SEIS in supply chain management.  Our special issue will focus on SEIS rather than simply focusing on ERP perspectives. SEIS include a focus on how the strategies at different levels of organizations, including planning and managing resources for organizational competitiveness, inter‐relate.  It will concentrate on SEIS in global supply chain and logistics and not generic organizational environments, thus focusing on multiple stakeholders with diverse interests.  Our special issue will include functions beyond ERP such as E‐Procurement, RFID, E‐Commerce and customer relationship …