Revisiting the Relationship between Information Technology Infrastructure and E-Commerce Performance: A Generativity Perspective

This research proposes a framework to study the relationship between enterprise IT infrastructure generativity and e-commerce performance. IT infrastructure generativity is the capacity of enterprise IT infrastructure to allow its IT and business users to make new things out of it. It is important to e-commerce companies because e-commerce performance is mainly driven by IT-based innovations. Organizational generativity, which is conceptualized as a three-dimensional concept consisting of simple structure, innovation culture and strategic flexibility, is proposed to complement IT infrastructure generativity to enhance e-commerce company innovations and performance. Survey method will be adopted to empirically validate the framework, and a sample of 250 internet retailers from North America will be collected. This research intends to renew our understanding of the relationship between IT infrastructure and e-commerce performance from the IT generativity perspective.