THE IMPACTS OF E-BUSINESS ADOPTION ON THE COMPANIES ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES: THREE CASES IN THE BRAZILIAN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
Abstract
Technological innovation provided by the internet is changing the way of carrying out business: Distribution Channels are eliminated, new services and businesses are being created and traditional companies - those not born on the internet which used to operate in the "real" world - facing these challenges are responding by adopting e-business activites. The conceptual framework for the company to make decisions about the most appropriate organizational structure for implementing its e-business activites have shown little systemization until now.Confronting this problem, this work looked at the following research question: How have so-called "traditional" companies operating in the "real" or physical market responded to the challenge of doing business on the internet? From this question, the present research aimed to clarify the kind of organizational structure that was used by Brazilian automotive maufacturers to carry out their e-business activities and what results were obtained. The definition of roles and changes in the companies´ organograms in order to adopt these activities were also studied. When a traditional company starts e-business activities, many organizational aspects are involved, and its success depends on the adoption of appropriate management mechanisms. The purpose of this research is to provide exploratory results of what kind of organizational structure was implemented to adopt e-business activities. This research is exploratory in nature in order to gain new insights into an as yet incompletely documented phenomenon. Therefore, a qualitative research methodology was used. Data were collected at three automotive industries in Brazil that had been working with e-business solutions for some time: Ford, GM and Daimler-Chrysler. Their organizational arrangements were studied, together with the results achieved from these structures. The definitions of roles and changes within the organogram of the companies were also studied.
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