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