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Complementary resources and SME firm performance: the role of external readiness and E-commerce functionality

Tan Yang (University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)
Jiyao Xun (School of Intelligent Finance and Business, Entrepreneur College, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China)
Woon Kian Chong (SP Jain School of Global Management - Singapore Campus, Singapore, Singapore)

Industrial Management & Data Systems

ISSN: 0263-5577

Article publication date: 5 April 2022

Issue publication date: 12 April 2022

799

Abstract

Purpose

Electronic commerce (EC) strategy – performance logic has gained significant popularity in the literature, particularly from the resource-based view (RBV) of theoretical underpinning. However, such an obsession of focusing on organizations' complementary resources has been increasingly challenged, which has pressed the RBV to examine the possibility of external factors that can also impact firm performance. In this study, the authors shed light on the firm's external readiness—defined as the extent to which a firm's customers and suppliers perceive EC as important—in the relationship between SME's complementary resources and firm performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors employed a refined data set based on the British EC Award database, in which the authors sampled 430 British SMEs' senior managements and examined how EC investments made by the SMEs influenced firm performance, and how their external readiness moderated this main relationship.

Findings

The results showed that, in line with the RBV perspective, SMEs' complementary business resources and human resources both had strong and direct impacts on the firm performance. They were also strongly mediated by EC functionality. In addition, SMEs' external readiness moderated the relationship between human resources and firm performance and that of EC functionality on firm performance.

Originality/value

The findings contribute to RBV theory building by extending earlier research on the role of technology as performance enablers for SMEs and shed light on the often-overlooked role of SMEs' external readiness.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This paper acknowledges funding sources awarded at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University to Dr Jiyao Xun for material support to this study (Research Enhancement Fund: REF-20-02-04).

Citation

Yang, T., Xun, J. and Chong, W.K. (2022), "Complementary resources and SME firm performance: the role of external readiness and E-commerce functionality", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 122 No. 4, pp. 1128-1151. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-01-2022-0045

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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