Toward Realizing Operational Excellence Through e-Procurement Adoption: A Resource Based View

This study examines a conceptual framework that investigates the determining factors affecting the e-procurement adoption by SMEs in Jordan. It extends to discover how e-procurement adoption contributes to the enhancement of operational excellence. The proposed conceptual framework was examined by distributing a structured questionnaire to a group of Jordan SMEs. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling technique were used to test the research hypotheses. The study results reveal that the IT infrastructure, top management support, and IT staff readiness have strong influences on e-procurement adoption. It was also found that e-procurement adoption is a powerful business tool to reach operational excellence. This implies that organizations with similar contextual settings can potentially utilize this study's findings and promote further implementation of e-procurement systems. This study gives deeper attention to the internal resources that decision makers should emphasize to adopt e-procurement successfully and consequently obtain its potential desired outcomes. The current study scrutinizes the intra-organizational competitive capabilities that enhance successful adoption of e-procurement and provides strong evidence on the possibility to harvest operational benefits through applying e-procurement in the SME's.