Electronic collaboration ontology: The case of readiness analysis of electronic marketplace adoption

This paper introduces the ontology of electronic collaboration (e-collaboration) and applies it for modeling the readiness analysis of e-collaboration through the electronic marketplace (EM). Our search of the literature shows that the publication of papers in the areas of e-collaboration and EM has reached to the third phase of S-shape growth, which indicates that these areas have arrived at a certain level of maturity. However, while most of the e-collaboration studies focus on the application of collaboration technologies, less attention has been paid to the development of frameworks and the models that can describe the concept of the collaboration. Based on the notion of e-collaboration at the organization level, this paper introduces the ontology of e-collaboration. The proposed e-collaboration ontology is further applied to the case of readiness analysis for EM-based collaboration. Following the proposed ontology, the readiness model displays key measures of readiness at the strategy, process, and technology levels. At each level, the measures are segmented into internal and external contexts.