Abstract:

Inter-organisational systems (IOS), which form the backbone of Business-to-Business (B2B) e-business, are now growingly adopted by the wholesaling companies operating in the Australian pharmaceutical industry. In this article, we report on the IOS implementation experience of a pharmaceutical wholesaling company. In particular, we explain the company’s motives for adopting a web-enabled IOS and the IOS implementation process it followed by drawing on our previously published Inter-Organisational Systems Motivation Model (IMM) (Rahim et al., 2011). The case study we present offers rich insights and useful lessons which help us better understand how organsiational motives for IOS adoption may influence the specific activities involved in IOS implementation processes. Our findings contribute to reducing the uncertainty associated with IOS implementation practices by clarifying the role of organisational motives for IOS adoption.