the purpose of this paper is to improve supply chain relationships in iranian small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) in automotive parts industry. for this reason, an importance-performance analysis (ipa) has been employed to categorized supply chain relationships metrics. also, the questionnaire method is used for gathering information. the paper identified thirteen supply chain relationshi...

The implementation of supplier portals is one of the tactics adopted by car manufacturers (OEM) to integrate with their suppliers. The portals have a significant impact on the supplier community which is largely formed of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper applies the social shaping of technology (SST) perspective to analyse the implementation of standardised portal technolog...

Many large enterprises develop their software nowadays in globally distributed settings. By using the option to outsource, the respective enterprises can realize decisive competitive advantages. In order to remain competitive, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are also forced to follow this trend and to outsource parts of their software development. However, most of the existing studies...

Cloud computing is an emerging concept of information technology that in many countries has an influence on many companies. The research was conducted to evaluate cloud computing adoption in Saudi Arabia; Benefits and hindrances for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The qualitative research approach is performed by interviews with the management of a variety of SMEs active in the infor...

The use of E-business in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) has been recently received an enormous attention in information systems research by both academic and practitioners. E-commerce has been empowering the small industry at a great speed and is becoming a widely spread opportunity for them to avail with the adoption of new and efficient technologies to enhance businesses; Indian SM...

Since the advent of the Internet, electronic commerce (e-commerce) has grown substantially across the globe. The Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) should take advantage of the internet and refocus their business strategies to improve their competitiveness. The aim of this paper is to identify the usage of e-commerce in SMEs based on industries and employee number. Based on the data coll...

Large scale Indian manufacturers started implementing Six Sigma to their supply core to fulfill the endless need of high quality products. As well, they initiated encouraging their suppliers to apply the well-ascertain SS management practice and kept no resource for supplier enterprises, generally small midsized enterprises to think for the admittance of Six Sigma as a quality promotion drive. ...

Today's economic crisis has led to bankruptcy of many successful, but usually large-sized enterprises. This brought into question the future of large-sized enterprises. However, the only alternative to largesized enterprises (LEs) is networking of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into Regional Production Networks (RPNet). RPNet is non-hierarchical organizational form in which every SME...

Electronic Commerce (EC) is becoming an increasingly important activity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper presents a model of the factors influencing the levels of EC adoption and EC success in SMEs. Case studies of five SMEs in the IT industry were used to explore two constructs in the EC literature: (1) EC adoption and (2) EC success. Both were found to be relevant and ...