& Research Article

Toward a Uni®ed View of ElectronicCommerce, Electronic Business, andCollaborative Commerce: A KnowledgeManagement Approach

Clyde W. Holsapple1* and Meenu Singh2

1 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, USA2 M.J. Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, USA

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become a major factor in determining the futuresurvival or success of organizations. The de®nitions of e-commerce are many and diverse. Inaddition to these, there are varied notions of electronic business (e-business) and collaborativecommerce (c-commerce). Here, we structure the existing ®ve-fold e-commerce taxonomy toaccommodate various e-business and c-commerce perspectives as well. From this, wesynthesize an integrated over-arching de®nition of e-business. However, the result has alimitation. To overcome it, we advance a knowledge-management view that explicitlyrecognizes e-business as being based on e-knowledge: processes and technologies formanaging knowledge. We contend that the knowledge-oriented perspective of e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business is bene®cial in furnishing a common, organized, and uni®edfoundation for understanding and managing electronic organizations in the knowledgee-conomy. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become amajor factor determining future survival or suc-cess of organizations. It is changing the shape ofcompetition, speed of action, and nature of leader-ship (Kalakota and Robinson, 1999). The advent ofthe World Wide Web represents a turning point inelectronic commerce, allowing organizations toachieve better economies of scale and scope. E-commerce is an infrastructure for a new way ofdoing business and gaining competitive advantagein the customer age (Fingar, Kumar and Sharma,2000).

Three distinct interrelated classes of electroniccommerce applications can be distinguished:consumer-to-business, business-to-business, andintraorganizational (Kalakota and Whinston,1996). Nevertheless, electronic commerce meansdifferent things to different people. These varied e-commerce perspectives coupled with notions ofelectronic business (e-business) and collaborativecommerce (c-commerce) combine to present aconfusing picture. Gray Eichorn, President andCEO of Open Market, says, `I don't have a clue; itdoesn't mean anything. To me, it's e-gads. Werefer to Internet commerce, meaning using theInternet to do business' (High Latitude, 1999).

E-commerce is commonly de®ned as usingtechnology to enable buy-sell transactions(Holsapple and Singh, 2000a). In everyday usage,the terms Internet commerce and Web-commerceare often interchanged with e-commerce (Fingar,

*Correspondence to: Clyde W. Holsapple, School ofManagement, Gatton College of Business and Economic,University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0034, USA.E-mail: cwhols@pop.uky.edu

Knowledge and Process Management Volume 7 Number 3 pp 151±164 (2000)

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Kumar and Sharma, 2000), even though e-commerce transactions are not limited to theInternet or Web. This common view of e-commerce is quite narrow and precludes otherimportant non-commercial transactions, informa-tion exchanges, and intraorganizational activities(Perry and Schneider, 2000). More recently, theterm e-business has become a central theme at theheart of business strategy. It refers to transforma-tion and streamlining an organization's valuechain activities through use of Internet technolo-gies. However, many managers still view e-business as simply buying and selling goods onthe Internet (Kalakota and Robinson, 1999). Gart-nerGroup (1999a) has identi®ed a complex form ofe-business called c-commerce, referring to colla-borative and ¯uid interaction of a community ofemployees, business partners, and customersdesigned to take advantage of new tradingopportunities made possible by the Internet. Thispaper introduces a taxonomy for understandingthe nature and relationships among e-commerce,c-commerce, and e-business.

As a ®eld of study and research, e-commercecuts across every functional business discipline. Itpervades practically every aspect of management.To help make sense out of the many perspectiveson e-commerce, Holsapple and Singh (2000a)developed a taxonomy of e-commerce de®nitionsfor systematically considering what an organiza-tion needs to address in its quest for competitive-ness in the ubiquitous e-commerce world. Thispaper extends the taxonomy to accommodate e-business and c-commerce perspectives.

Perspectives are very important because theyin¯uence and guide the nature or focus of bothbusiness practice and research effortsÐmore so for ayoung dynamic ®eld such as this. Based on observedrelationships among the taxonomy's ®ve categories,a single integrated perspective on e-commerce, c-commerce, and e-business in synthesized. We thenextend this perspective by adopting a knowledgemanagement orientation. The result is a uni®ed viewthat clari®es relationships among the competingconventional conceptualizations, offering a struc-ture for guiding both research and practice.

Following a summary of the e-commerce taxon-omy, we examine representative de®nitions ofc-commerce and e-business. Their relationships toe-commerce taxonomy's categories are discussed.Subsuming all the notions, we then advance ane-knowledge perspective of e-business, explicitlyrecognizing the ties to knowledge managementprocesses and technologies. We conclude by not-ing implications for practice, research, and study.

TAXONOMY OF ELECTRONICCOMMERCE DEFINITIONS: A SUMMARY

To ®nd a best, most inclusive, comprehensivecharacterization of electronic commerce, Holsappleand Singh (2000a) collected representative e-commerce de®nitions from diverse print andelectronic sources. Examples appear in Table 1.However, no single de®nition appeared to dom-inate or encompass all others. Nevertheless, aninterpretive analysis revealed that the de®nitionsclustered around ®ve distinct themes, resulting inan e-commerce taxonomy.

Here we summarize the taxonomy's ®vecategories of e-commerce: trading view, infor-mation exchange view, activity view, effectsview, and value chain view. Each perspective hasvalue as a lens for viewing the e-commercelandscape.

Trading view

Insofar as the term `commerce' connotes market-based activities, e-commerce tends to be associatedwith computer-based means for performing com-mercial transactionsÐbuying and selling. For exam-ple, shopping services allow a consumer to seek andpurchase goods or services through electronic net-works. This view of e-commerce is concerned withwhat kind of buying-selling can be done electro-nically, what aspects of such transactions can beelectronic, identi®cation of enabling technologies,and exploration of electronic trading behaviors.This e-commerce view, illustrated in Figure 1, isprobably the one that springs to the popular mindwhen the term `electronic commerce' is used.

Information exchange view

E-commerce not only enables exchange of moneyfor products and services, but does so viaexchanges of information. Information can beconsidered as characterizing the substance of amarket transaction, and can itself be the commod-ity being bought and sold. Beyond this, informa-tion transfer can occur prior to a transaction (e.g.to support underlying decisions) or following atrade (e.g. to assess it). Figure 2 conveys theinformation exchange emphasis found in many e-commerce de®nitions.

Activity view

A third class of e-commerce de®nitions is com-posed of those that recognize the use of technologyin accomplishing a variety of business activities

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152 C. W. Holsapple and M. Singh

including, but not limited to trading. As Figure 3suggests, the notion of `commerce' is extended toencompass not only the use of technologies fortransaction execution but also for presale and

postsale efforts, decision support, maintaining/cultivating business relationships plus a host ofancillary activities (e.g. satisfying legal/regulatoryrequirements).

Table 1. Representative e-commerce de®nitions

De®nition Source Focus

$ Electronic commerce is the use of computer networks to conductbusiness Ðbasically the buying and selling of goods and servicesÐelectronically with one's suppliers, customers, and/or competitors.

Hayashi (1996) Trading View

$ Electronic commerce is the use of telecommunication networks for thepurpose of linking organizations and/or individuals that engage insome form of computer-mediated commercial trading relationship. Itincorporates things like buying and selling over such platforms as theInternet, EDI, Interorganizational Systems such as EFT, Point of SalesSystems etc.

Steinfeld (1997) Trading View

$ Electronic commerce has been used to describe a wide variety ofbusinessÐrelated transactions, but is at its core the data used forconducting day-to-day business operations with suppliers andcustomers.

Coburn (1995) InformationExchange View

$ Electronic commerce can be de®ned as commercial activitiesconducted through an exchange of information generated, stored, orcommunicated by electronic, optical, or analogous means, includingelectronic data interchange (EDI), e-mail, and so forth.

UN ReferenceNumber A/50/17(1995)

InformationExchange View

$ Broadly speaking, electronic commerce includes any form of economicactivity conducted via electronic connections.

Wigand (1997) Activity View

$ Electronic commerce is an integrative concept, designed to drawtogether a wide range of business support services, includinginterÐorganizational e-mail; directories; trading support systemsfor commodities; products, customized products and custom-builtgoods and services; ordering and logistics support systems;settlement support systems; and management and statistical reportingsystems.

Clarke (1997) Activity View

$ Broadly de®ned, electronic commerce is a modern businessmethodology that addresses the needs of organizations, merchants,and consumers to cut costs while improving the quality of goods andservices and increasing the speed of service delivery.

Kalakota andWhinston(1996)

Effects View

$ Electronic commerce refers to the conduct of business between twoor more companies, using an integrated set of electronic tools tostreamline business processes and reduce cycle time. These toolsinclude EDI, imaging, bar coding, e-mail, work¯ow managementsystems, and any other tools that may be appropriate to streamline agiven business relationship.

Benesko (1994) Effects View

$ Electronic commerce is commerce which is enabled by WWW-eratechnologies, to permit the seamless integration of information,communication, and logistical technology along the entire value chainof business processes from the suppliers of raw goods and services tothe ®nal customers.

Becker, Ferris, andOsborn (1998)

Value ChainView

$ Electronic commerce denotes the seamless application of informationand communication technology from its point of origin to its endpointalong the entire value chain of business processes conductedelectronically and designed to enable the accomplishment of abusiness goal. These processes may be partial or complete and mayencompass business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer andconsumer-to-business transactions.

Wigand (1997) Value ChainView

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Effects view

The foregoing categories are concerned with whatand how aspects of e-commerce. They focus onwhat is done (trading, other activities) and how itis done (technology-based information exchanges).As Figure 4 indicates, a fourth category of de®ni-tions emphasizes the why aspect of e-commerce: itsgoals, reasons and effects. Effects of e-commerceappear in all areas of business, from customerservice to logistics to new product design. Itfacilitates new types of business processes forreaching and interacting with customers, suppli-

ers, and partners. It can reduce overhead costs inmanaging orders and interacting with tradingpartners, maintain/increase market shares, lowerproduct cycle times, facilitate collaboration,improve service quality, reduce response timesand so forth.

Value-chain view

A ®fth group of e-commerce de®nitions clustersaround the value-chain concept. The value chainmodel identi®es technologically and economically

Figure 1 The taxonomy's trading view

Figure 2 The taxonomy's information exchange view

Figure 3 The taxonomy's activity view

Figure 4 The taxonomy's effects view

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154 C. W. Holsapple and M. Singh

distinct activities (called `value activities') that anorganization performs in the course of doingbusiness (Porter, 1985).

The class of de®nitions depicted by Figure 5 seese-commerce as the value-creating use of technol-ogy. It supports or performs value activities(which overlay trading and other business activ-ities) in an effort to enhance competitiveness. Anextended value chain incorporates value chains ofother entities such as suppliers and /or consumersand is commonly called a supply chain. Eventhough it is not explicitly recognized in de®nitionsunderlying this category, use of technology inimplementing supply chains ®ts is as part of thevalue chain view of e-commerce. Thus, when werefer to value chains we mean both internal andextended value chains.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Two notions generally advanced as distinct frome-commerce are collaborative commerce and electronicbusiness. Here, we present a representative assort-ment of c-commerce and e-business de®nitions.These are analyzed with respect to the e-commercetaxonomy, showing that they are not only compa-tible with the taxonomy but help give additionalstructure to it.

Collaborative commerce

According to GartnerGroup, the e-commerceworld of businesses shifting their operations tothe Internet is fast evolving into a virtual strategycalled c-commerce, in which companies deal withmultiple, ever-changing partners (McCarthy,1999). Collaboration has emerged as a criticalbusiness practice for improving performance ofthe value chain. Collaboration seeks to syn-chronize business-to-business and business-to-consumer trading partners. This synchronization

is a strategic initiative to achieve ef®cienciespreviously targeted through such efforts as Just-in-Time, Quick Response, Ef®cient ConsumerResponse, Enterprise Resource Planning andothers (Dynamic Web Enterprises, 1999).

Most c-commerce de®nitions (see Table 2 forexamples) emphasize the importance of exchan-ging information. Consequently, they focus on itsdistribution in the conduct of e-commerce (e.g.messages passed electronically between tradingpartners, electronic information transfer within abusiness). On a broader scale, the de®nitionsrecognize a new paradigm shift sweeping thebusiness world today: that information is not justa supporting element of the value-adding process,but a source of value itself; that organizationsapply useful information to make more timely,better decisions. Judith Hurwitz, president andCEO of Hurwitz Group, states that `A dynamic,inter-enterprise business infrastructure that linksproduct and process information across organiza-tions, divisions, and applications is how compa-nies will succeed in the 21st century' (PTC.com,1999).

Clearly, collaboration is not con®ned to tradingactivity. Broadly, commerce involves negotiatedtrading of valuable objects or services betweenmultiple parties and includes all activities thateach of the parties undertakes to complete thetransaction (Perry and Schneider, 2000). Unlikee-commerce, trading activity does not receiveany particular emphasis in c-commerce. Usingcollaborative tools, components, and integrationtechnologies, c-commerce is concerned with infor-mation exchanges that pervade all collaborativeactivities in a community of participants (includ-ing, but not limited to, the activity of trading). Thiscoincides with the taxonomy's activity view of e-commerce. The activity view recognizes activitiesboth across and within organization boundaries,ranging from tactical to strategic levels, entailingboth business and consumer contacts, and includ-

Figure 5 The taxonomy's value chain view

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ing both pre-transaction and post-transactionactivities (Holsapple and Singh, 2000a). Eventhough c-commerce de®nitions do not mentionthese business activities explicitly, they arecommon and inherent in the very nature ofcollaborative commerce.

Because of its main focus on technology forinformation exchange in conducting activitieswithin collaborative community, c-commerce coa-lesces closely around the information exchangeand activity views of the e-commerce taxonomy.This is not to say that c-commerce de®nitionsentirely ignore remaining views of the taxonomy.For example, one de®nition refers to selling (Ward,1999); organizations moving toward c-commerceare replacing traditional business trading relation-ships with constantly shifting alliances and ¯uidinteractive collaboration designed to take advan-tage of new trading opportunities made possibleby the Internet and other technologies (Gartner-Group, 1999a). Similarly, their de®nition refers tointended effects of c-commerce suggesting that itcan promote enterprise agility and dynamic inte-gration (GartnerGroup, 1999a). Although no directmention of the value chain is made in the c-commerce de®nitions, collaboration is critical forimproving performance in value chains.

Figure 6 illustrates the relationship betweene-commerce and c-commerce in terms of thetaxonomy. While all taxonomy classes derivefrom e-commerce de®nitions, the most commonlyemphasized view of e-commerce is electronicsupport of trading. Conversely, for c-commerce

the clear emphasis is on electronically supportinginformation exchange to foster collaborative busi-ness activities, with some relationship to the otherthree classes.

Electronic business

Competitive issues driving businesses of all sizesand across all industry sectors call for nothing lessthan complete organizational metamorphosis. E-business is the way companies are fundamentallychanging the way they do business using electro-nic technologies (Oracle Corp., 1999). E-business ismuch more than technology; it also involves amind set (Electronic Business Inc., 1999). Some-times e-business is equated with e-commerce, butmany contend that e-commerce is only part of amuch bigger picture (Dalton, 1999). E-business isthe overall strategy, and e-commerce is an extre-mely important facet of e-business (Kalakota andRobinson, 1999).

E-business solutions are helping today's com-panies do everything better, faster, and moreef®ciently. From forging strong customer relation-ships, to managing supply chains, to strengtheningvalue provided to customers, to electronic disse-mination of information, e-business is changingthe way work is done (MySAP.com, 1999). The `e'may come ®rst in e-business, but it is the `business'that is important (Pickering, 1999). No matter howpowerful technology is it is only valuable to theextent that it supports business; e-business is moreabout business than technology (IBM Corp., 1999).

Table 2. Representative c-commerce de®nitions

De®nition Source

$ Collaborative commerce occurs when organizations employ real-time collaborationtools to sell or support their products and services to other businesses, or directlyto consumers.

Ward (1999)

$ Collaborative commerce enables manufacturers to automate information ¯owswithin a multi-channel distribution network, including manufacturers,distributors, dealers, service groups, and end consumers.

InSight (1999)

$ Collaborative commerce will provide a dynamic, Internet-based inter-enterprisebusiness infrastructure that links product and process information andapplications boundaries of internal organizations as well as suppliers, partners,and customers

Maynard (1999)

$ Collaborative commerce describes the collaborative and ¯uid interaction of acommunity of personnel, business partners, and customers that is joined togetherby Internet, component and integration technologies, resulting in agile but highlyintegrated `virtual' multicompany enterprises.

GartnerGroup (1999a)

$ A key goal of c-commerce is to harness all product information and applicationassets into a Web-based framework and providing ubiquitous, personalized accessto all participants in a given commerce community.

Burdick (1999)

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156 C. W. Holsapple and M. Singh

Examining e-business de®nitions (see Table 3 forexamples) with respect to the e-commerce taxon-omy leads to several observations. Taken together,e-commerce and c-commerce are mainly con-cerned with what is done (trading and otherbusiness activities) and how it is done (viatechnology-based information exchanges). Manyof the e-business de®nitions, however, stress thewhy aspect because they explicitly de®ne e-businessin terms of its various outcomes and bene®ts. If e-business is the cause of a revolution in rules ofbusiness, its effect, in short, is structural transfor-mation of an organization's internal foundations tobe more effective (Kalakota and Robinson, 1999).Essentially, e-business is technology-enabled trans-formation that dramatically increases ef®cienciesof traditional business processes (GartnerGroup,1999b). These ef®ciencies are materialized in avariety of forms: maximized customer value, lowercosts, improved quality of products and services,increased innovation, lower product cycle times,optimal trading opportunities, and so forth.Beyond ef®ciencies of traditional processes, itstimulates new processes as well. The e-businessemphasis on such outcomes and bene®ts clearlyaligns the notion of e-business with the taxon-omy's effects view illustrated in Figure 4.

Another major point in e-business de®nitions isrecognition of the value chain and value addingactivities. Competitive advantage is obviously notachieved by simply emulating competitors; it isachieved by matching customer desires to valuechain competencies (GartnerGroup, 1999b). Bothsides of the equation can be modi®ed by value-enhancing processes through the use of e-businesstechnologies and techniques. An electronic busi-ness uses technology in an effort to continuously

optimize its value chain positions. To achieve this,an enterprise must integrate its e-commerce,customer relationship, enterprise, supply chain,and logistics systems with its value chainprocesses and its business partner's processes(GartnerGroup, 1999b).

The value chain view takes the stand that theunfolding world of e-business cuts across everyfunctional ®eld of business and pervades practi-cally every aspect of management. E-businessrepresents a new means of value adding andvalue creation for organizations and consumers. Ithas both an internal orientation (facilitating valueactivities) and an external orientation (linkingvalue activities with those of suppliers andcustomers).

Because of its concentration on the bene®ts ofconducting business and achieving competitiveadvantage via value chain management, thenotion of e-business relates closely to the effectsand value chain views of the ®ve-fold taxonomy.This is illustrated in Figure 7, which showsrelationships among e-commerce, c-commerce,and e-business giving structure to the taxonomy.

E-business emerges as the broadest of the threeconcepts. It encompasses e-commerce in its popu-lar (albeit narrow) sense of buying and selling.Hence, it indirectly relates to the taxonomy'strading perspective. For a given business transac-tion, the ¯ow of material is secondary to the ¯owof information that enables, facilitates, and guidesit (Cook, Chung and Holsapple, 1995). Somee-business de®nitions explicitly or implicitlyrecognize this, thus relating e-business to thetaxonomy's information-exchange view. Becausee-business allows customers, partners, and supp-liers to seamlessly interact with organizations

Figure 6 Relationship between e-commerce and c-commerce

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using collaborative technology, it naturally en-compasses all business activities performed bythe collaborative commerce community. Some

e-business de®nitions directly allude to thisnotion of collaboration, thereby relating e-businessto the taxonomy's activity view.

Figure 7 Relationship between e-commerce, c-commerce, and e-business

Table 3. Representative e-business de®nitions

De®nition Source

$ Electronic business allows customers, partners, and suppliers to seamlesslyinteract with organizations providing their constituents with value-addedcustomized services and immediate access to relevant information.

Hurwitz Group (1999)

$ E-business encompasses e-commerce and includes both front- andback-of®ce application that form the engine for modern business tomaximize customer value.

Kalakota and Robinson (1999)

$ E-business is the powerful business environment that is created whenyou connect critical business systems directly to customers, employees,vendors, and business partners, using intranets, extranets, e-commercetechnologies, collaborative applications, and the Web.

E-commerce, E-business-IncomeOpportunities (1999)

$ E-business encompasses electronic commerce and includes thereengineering of business processes and the use of the World Wide Webto disseminate information electronically.

Dalton (1999)

$ E-business uses technologies such as the growth of the Web, componentarchitectures, acceptance of emerging standards like XML, agents, andcollaborative technologies that enable multiple trading partners to workinteractively producing lower costs, improved quality of products andservices, increased innovation, and optimal trading opportunities.

GartnerGroup (1999a)

$ E-business is the transformation of key business processes through theuse of Internet technologies.

IBM Corp. (1999)

$ E-business deals with the continuous optimization of an organization'svalue chain position, and integrates its e-commerce, customerrelationship, knowledge, supply chain and logistics managementapplications.

GartnerGroup (1999b)

$ The intent of e-business is to apply the bene®ts of Internet technologiesto better manage a company's total value chain with a focus onwork¯ow, distributed workgroup computing and Internet-centricoperations at all levels.

High Latitude. (1999)

$ E-business means more than just buying and selling via the InternetÐitmeans building on the information technology platform on which thebusinesses of tomorrow will run.

Oracle Corp. (1999)

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158 C. W. Holsapple and M. Singh

Relationship between e-commerce, c-commerce,and e-business

Our analysis of c-commerce and e-business showsthat they are entirely consistent with the taxon-omy. Indeed, we have found no de®nition of eithernotion that is outside the scope of the originaltaxonomy. Another interesting ®nding is the three-layer structure that these additional conceptscontribute to the taxonomy. E-commerce, in itspopular, narrow trading sense occupies the toplayer with c-commerce on the next stratum. Thebroader connotation of c-commerce stems from thefact that collaboration cannot happen withoutshared activities among participants and necessa-rily involves information exchange.

E-business, with its main emphasis on value chainand intended effects, occupies the foundationallayer of the triangle. It has the broadest meaningamong the three concepts guiding the manifestationof trading, information exchange, and other busi-ness activities. As a consequence, e-business can beconsidered an over-arching concept and we refer tothe structured taxonomy in Figure 7 as the e-business taxonomy. We use it in the discussion thatfollows to introduce an integrated de®nition of e-business that encompasses all of the taxonomy'selements. The taxonomy can be used by practi-tioners and researchers as a uni®ed, relativelycomplete perspective for understanding the variednotions and their interrelationships.

De®nitions control and guide the focus ofresearch efforts, business practices, and educa-tional initiatives. Without some kind of over-arching de®nition and structure for a ®eld,`progress is but a fortunate combination of cir-cumstances, research is fumbling in the dark, andthe dissemination of knowledge is a cumbersomeprocess' (Vatter, 1947). Through its synthesis,Figure 7 suggests that it is possible to havea single unifying de®nition for e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business that accommodates all®ve views of the taxonomy. In this spirit, weadvance the following de®nition of e-business,visually represented in Figure 8:

Electronic business is an approach to achievingbusiness goals in which technology for informationexchange enables or facilitates execution of activities inand across value chains, as well as supporting decisionmaking that underlies those activities.

This de®nition follows from an integratedcharacterization of e-commerce (Holsapple andSingh, 2000a) and embraces each of the taxon-omy's ®ve views and three layers. The de®nitiondoes not try to enumerate pertinent technologiesbecause they are numerous and subject to change.Nor does it enumerate possible business goals oractivities in a value chain. The former involvesvarious effects at multiple levels. The latter arewell known and encompass the notion of trading;

Figure 8 Integrated view of electronic business

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they include both collaborative and non-collaborative activity.

By including activities both within and acrossvalue chains, the de®nition allows for bothintra-organizational relationships and trans-organizational relationships (i.e. business-to-busi-ness and business-to-consumer). The integratedde®nition emphasizes that e-business involves notonly electronic support for the execution ofactivities (i.e. transactions), but also electronicsupport for the decisions that shape these activ-ities. Decision-making underlies each activity in avalue chain, and can bene®t from (or even require)the use of technology. Wilder (1999b) emphasizesthe increased importance of technology for busi-ness decision-making in electronic organizations.An examination of decision support aspects ofelectronic commerce appears in Holsapple, Joshiand Singh (2000).

A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VIEW OFELECTRONIC BUSINESS

Businesses operate in a knowledge-driven econ-omy and increasingly function as knowledge-based organizations (Holsapple and Whinston,1987; Drucker, 1993; Reich, 1998). This is aneconomy where the value of knowledge as inputand output is growing; knowledge is a keyingredient of what is bought and sold (bothexplicitly and implicitly); knowledge resourcesare rising in importance relative to traditionallyrecognized resources (e.g. ®nancial, material); andnew technologies and techniques for managingknowledge resources are emerging (Stewart,1998a). Broadly speaking, knowledge management(KM) is concerned with making the right know-ledge available to the right processors (human orcomputer) at the right times in the right presenta-tions for the right cost (Holsapple and Joshi, 1999).

Accepting the proposition that e-business occurswithin and among knowledge-based organizationsin the knowledge-driven economy, it is importantfor e-business perspectives to explicitly recognizeknowledge, plus processes and technologies formanaging it. E-business can be seen as part of anorganization's conduct of knowledge manage-ment, which includes such knowledge manipula-tion activities as acquiring, selecting, internalizing,generating, and externalizing knowledge (Holsap-ple and Joshi, 1999). These knowledge manipula-tion activities are linked into various patterns byknowledge ¯ows. In many cases, both the manip-ulation activities and the ¯ows that connect

them can be electronically enabled, facilitated, orperformed.

We contend that a KM-oriented perspective ofe-business is bene®cial in furnishing a common,organized, uni®ed foundation for understandingand managing electronic organizations in theknowledge economy. However, knowledge man-agement is not mentioned in any of the e-commerce de®nitions compiled to derive thetaxonomy, nor in any of the c-commerce/e-business de®nitions found to structure it. BecauseKM goes well beyond the notion of informationexchange, it follows that the taxonomy and e-business de®nition can be improved by incorpor-ating it.

More than information is involved in the conductof e-business. E-business employs multiple typesof knowledge, of which information is justone kind. `All information is knowledge, notall knowledge is information' (Machlup, 1980).Wilder (1999b) states that organizations are goingthrough an e-transformation which is character-ized by several factors and one of them is a rapidtransfer of knowledge, both within companies andacross the value chain. But the conduct of e-business involves more than transferal or exchange.Certainly, ¯ows are important, but so is theprocessing that precedes and follows an exchange(e.g. deriving, discovering, assimilating, organiz-ing, extracting knowledge). E-business can be seenas the electronic part of an organization's conductof KM.

Knowledge and knowledge management

Knowledge exists when there is a usable repre-sentation of something (Newell, 1982). Representa-tions can be material, electrical, behavioral, mental,and so forth. It is not uncommon to see distinc-tions drawn between data, information, andknowledge. For example, data imbued with rele-vance is said to be information, and informationimbued with context is said to be knowledge(Gantz, 1998). These classi®cations may beinteresting, but they focus on only one type ofknowledge: knowledge that describes the stateof some world. Aside from this descriptive know-ledge (`know what'), there are other importanttypes of knowledge that need to be managed(Holsapple, 1995). These include procedural know-ledge, which is a step-by-step speci®cation foraccomplishing some task (`know how'), andreasoning knowledge which speci®es what conclu-sion can be drawn when a particular situationexists (`know why').

Knowledge management is concerned with

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160 C. W. Holsapple and M. Singh

ways in which computers and humans representand manipulate these types of knowledge.As such, KM involves much more than theinformation transferals found in e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business de®nitions. It also in-volves ¯ows of procedural and reasoning know-ledge, plus various manipulations of any types ofknowledge that are possessed, have been received,and are to be transferred. Technological means formanipulating descriptive, procedural, and reason-ing knowledge are well known (Holsapple andWhinston, 1988). Moreover, new technologiescontinue to emerge for fostering knowledgeaccess, sharing, preservation, and reuse inorganizations (O'Leary, 1998; Holsapple andJoshi, 1999).

Activities that an organization's participantsperform when manipulating knowledge resourcescan be viewed on several levels. At a high level,there are such activities as experimentation anddecision making. At a more elemental level, fourkinds of knowledge manipulation activities recurin the conduct of KM: acquiring, selecting, inter-nalizing, and using (Holsapple and Joshi, 1999).Acquiring refers to identi®cation, capture, andorganization of knowledge from the externalenvironment for transforming to an internalizingand/or using activity within an organization.Selecting refers to identi®cation, extraction, andorganization of knowledge from an organization'sown knowledge resources for transferal.

Internalizing refers to assimilation, storage, andinternal distribution of knowledge that has beenacquired, selected, or generated. It results instructural and/or content changes to an organiza-tion's knowledge resource. The changes mayinvolve addition, replication, elimination, andmodi®cation. Using is the activity of applyingknowledge. Knowledge can be used for generatingnew knowledge by either deriving it from existingknowledge. (e.g. via analysis) or discovering newknowledge in the context of what is known (e.g.via creative insight). Knowledge can also be usedfor externalizing: producing organizational outputsby incorporating knowledge into goods and ser-vices, by using knowledge to transform rawmaterials into products.

Every organization faces challenges of how toimplement individual knowledge manipulationactivities. There are also challenges of how toarrange multiple knowledge manipulation activ-ities subject to environmental and resource con-straints. How these challenges are met determinesthe organization's degree of success in recognizingand satisfying its knowledge needs. Leadership,coordination, control, and measurement are

important in this regard (Holsapple and Joshi,1999). Ultimately, its approach to KM affects anorganization's competitiveness (Holsapple andSingh, 2000b).

Knowledge management and electronic business

The present economy has been variously describedas the network economy, the digital economy,and the knowledge economy. At the intersectionof these concepts we ®nd the e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business phenomenon. The explicitsale of knowledge is widespread and the implicitsale of knowledge (via incorporation into bundlesof goods and services) is ubiquitous (Stewart,1998b). Electronic business is an important facil-itator, enabler, and driver of the knowledgeeconomy. Success in this economy requires effec-tive management of an enterprise's knowledgeresources. We use the term e-knowledge to refer totechnology and attendant strategy that helpsaccomplish knowledge manipulation activitiesand the ¯ows among them.

As Figure 9 suggests, KM underpins the entirevalue chain and is instrumental in achievingvarious business effects. Knowledge and itsmanipulation are inherent in every businessactivity and subsume the limited notion of infor-mation exchanges. The decision making thatunderlies every trade is a knowledge-managementepisode. Figure 9 also suggests that e-knowledge isa foundation for e-business, although it may alsohave some non-business (e.g. recreational) mani-festations. We contend that both practitioners andresearchers should be aware of and can bene®tfrom a view that relates e-business to the know-ledge-driven economy:

Electronic business is an approach to achievingbusiness goals in which e-knowledge enables or facil-itates the execution of activities in and across valuechains, as well as the making of decisions that underliethose activities.

As Figure 10 shows, we have adapted theintegrated e-business de®nition by substitutingfor information-exchange technology the richerconcept of e-knowledge. In this view, e-businessdeals not only with descriptive knowledge (i.e.information), but also with procedural and reason-ing knowledge. For instance, it includes appletprocessing which involves transfer of proceduralknowledge (as distinct from information) from aserver to a client. In this view, e-business alsoinvolves more than transfer. For example, itincludes generation of knowledge by online calcu-lators or expert systems.

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Electronic Commerce, Electronic Business, and Collaborative Commerce 161

The unifying de®nition establishes a connectionbetween two megatrends reshaping the businessworld: e-business and knowledge management. Ithas been observed that `. . .the very nature oforganizations is changing from an emphasis onworking with materials to an emphasis on work-ing with knowledge and we will eventually cometo view work with material goods as a secondary

or almost incidental aspect of an organization'smission. Furthermore, managing an organization'shuman and ®nancial resources will also becomeexercises in knowledge management' (Holsappleand Whinston, 1987). E-business occurs in a worldof these knowledge-based organizations, employ-ing technology for representing and processingknowledge throughout a network of value chains.

Figure 9 Relationships between e-commerce, c-commerce, e-business, and e-knowledge

Figure 10 Knowledge-management view of electronic business

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162 C. W. Holsapple and M. Singh

An organization's e-business and knowledge man-agement initiatives need to be aligned on thecommon ground of e-knowledge.

CONCLUSION

E-commerce, c-commerce, and e-business havediverse meanings. These are often poorly,partially, or narrowly understood. This paperintroduces an organized way of viewing the e-confusion by structuring a ®ve-fold taxonomy andsynthesizing an integrated perspective of e-business. This integrated perspective does have alimitation: it is based on the concept of informationexchange shared by e-commerce, c-commerce, ande-business de®nitions. But this concept is only partof a much more extensive one known as know-ledge management.

To further the emergence of e-businesses, iden-tifying and managing knowledge in an e-businessis one of the critical issues academics and practi-tioners need to consider (Braganza and Lambert,1999). Toward this end, we have extended thetaxonomy to re¯ect the knowledge managementsetting in which e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business occurs, and we have introduced aknowledge-oriented de®nition of e-business asa common, organized, and uni®ed foundationfor understanding and managing the modernelectronic organization. The result is a uni®ed,over-arching perspective that brings the inter-related notions of e-commerce, c-commerce,e-business, and e-knowledge together under oneumbrella.

This perspective recognizes that e-business hap-pens in a knowledge-driven economy, that it dealswith types of knowledge other than information,and that it can involve more than transfersbetween knowledge manipulation activities. Thatis, e-business can be seen as being based on e-knowledge: technologies and attendant strategiesfor representing and processing knowledge. Itshould be noted that there are many non-technological approaches to managing knowledge;these are outside the immediate scope ofe-business.

The KM view of electronic business indicatesthat e-knowledge enables and/or facilitates theimplementation of value activities. E-knowledgecan also support the making of decisions thatunderpin these implementations. Thus, suchtechnologies can contribute to a ®rm's competi-tiveness by enhancing the performance and out-come of one or more value activities. Furtherresearch is needed to investigate what activities

in the conduct of KM are potential sources ofcompetitive advantage via electronic businesspractices.

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