When considering the affect of e-pr

When considering the affect of e-procurement on organizational characteristics, the most significant issue to emerge from our study was the role of internal service in e-procurement. Our analysis suggests that the reputation of the procurement function and the general disposition of an organization towards e-procurement is strongly influenced by users’ perceptions of internal service. Whilst we support the view that e-procurement implementation creates the potential to improve compliance, it is clear that compliance is far from ‘given’. The extent to which internal users are provided with support to use e-procurement appears to have a significant effect on maverick spending.

As a practical implication, managers should question the extent to which they can ‘force’ individuals to use e-procurement and focus instead on delivering e-procurement in a way that ‘encourages’ its use.

E-procurement was heralded in the literature pre-2000 as offering significant opportunities for the purchasing function and the procurement process. This paper has explored some of the operational issues surrounding implementation and roll-out in order to provide further insights to the debate in this area. It has allowed us to develop greater understanding of the factors at play in delivering the benefits attributable to system adoption and deployment.

To improve our understanding of the mechanisms and processes by which these benefits are gained, this article presented an e-procurement effects model as a foundation for ongoing research into e-procurement implementation. We believe that this model will serve as a basis for classifying existing e-procurement research and directing future collaborative and comparative work in the area.