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E-Commerce and Executive Information Systems 105<br />
facilitator of business activities in the world today. It is assumed that members of an<br />
organization will reap the fruits of new technologies and that computers have no<br />
negative impact on society, organizations and people.<br />
IS are technology-based innovations created and used by individuals, organizations<br />
and societies (Allen, 2000). Technological advances have allowed<br />
organizations to utilize IT applications in all aspects of organizational management<br />
(Khosrowpour, 1998). IS to support senior executives have been available for well<br />
over a decade (Poon & Wagner, 2001). EIS grew out of the development of IS<br />
to be used directly by executives and used to augment the supply of information by<br />
subordinates (Srivihok, 1998). EIS is a technology that is continually emerging in<br />
response to managers’ specific decision-making needs (Turban et al., 1999).<br />
The ubiquitous nature of the Inter<strong>net</strong> and its universal connectivity/<strong>net</strong>worked<br />
capability are dramatically revolutionizing the manner in which organizations and<br />
individuals access and share information (Anandarajan & Simmers, 2001). Many<br />
organizations hope to achieve general distributed computing across large <strong>net</strong>works<br />
or even across organizational boundaries (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2000). The<br />
adoption of <strong>net</strong>works in day-to-day and critical organizational operations has made<br />
them indispensable for co-operative work (Theoharakis & Serpanos, 2002).<br />
Advances in computer technologies combined with telecommunication technologies<br />
have lead to the development of the Inter<strong>net</strong> and its most popular<br />
application, the World Wide Web (‘the Web’) (Khosrowpour, 2000). A new set<br />
of challenges has arizen as organizations integrate IT into all functions and activities<br />
of the modern organization (Khosrowpour & Liebowitz, 1997).<br />
As the usage of IT increases, Web-enabled information technologies can<br />
provide the means for greater access to information from disparate computer<br />
applications and other information resources (Eder, 2000). Many organizations<br />
have benefited from the technologies of the Web (Khosrowpour, 1998). These<br />
technologies include: intra<strong>net</strong>, Inter<strong>net</strong>, extra<strong>net</strong>, e-commerce, Wireless Application<br />
Protocol (WAP) and other mobile technologies. E-commerce and its impact<br />
on EIS implementation and usage is the focus of this chapter. There exists a high<br />
degree of similarity between the characteristics of a ‘good EIS’ and Web-based<br />
technologies (Tang et al., 1997).<br />
Executives deal mostly with ill-structured decision-making (Lee & Chen,<br />
1997). Definitions of e-commerce and e-business are varied (see, for example,<br />
Rockart & DeLong, 1998; Carlsson & Widmeyer, 1990; Watson et al., 1991;<br />
Westland & Walls, 1991; Whymark, 1991; Millet & Mawhinney, 1992; Rainer et<br />
al., 1992). All definitions identify the need for information that supports decisions<br />
about the business as the most important reason for the existence of EIS (Khan,<br />
1996). Executives use EIS to extract, filter, compress and track critical data (Butler,<br />
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