Peer-reviewed
Realising platform operational agility through information technology-enabled capabilities: A resource-interdependence perspective
Intensifying competition in recent times requires business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce platforms to develop operational agility for competitive advantage. Despite the agreement on an increasing competitive landscape, the process for realising information technology (IT)-driven operational agility on e-business platforms has received little scrutiny. Through an investigation of M.com, a leading multisided online retailing platform in China, this study provides a clear thesis of resource interdependencies and IT-enabled capabilities forged during operational processes to realise operational agility. Our investigation, observations, and reflections from practice substantiate a model of how a platform like M.com cultivates IT-driven resource-interdependent competencies and capabilities tantamount to realising operational agility. The model shows how IT enables three capabilities—localised, synergistic, and optimised—which reflect the effective co-ordination of three resource interdependencies (pooled, sequential, and reciprocal) during M.com's complex operations and processes, and explicates the consequences. For research, we postulate that IT-enabled operational agility in complex organisational forms, cultivated through the development of resource-interdependent capabilities to deliver effective sensing and response mechanisms, forms effective strategies for the B2C platform in dynamic marketplace conditions
Article, 2019