Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Peyman Ghafari Ashtiani ¹
• Maryam Ghiasaadi Farahani ²

¹ Associate Professor of Business Administration. Faculty of Management. Islamic Azad University, Arak branch. Arak Iran.

² PhD Business Management, Young and Elite Researchers Club, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran.

Abstract

The current research has identified the factors affecting the management and organization of businesses based on e-commerce through a meta-combination approach. The research is applied in terms of purpose and qualitative in nature with an exploratory approach. The community of this research is the articles in the field of managing and organizing e-commerce jointly or separately. The method of collecting information is the document-library method with the efficiency of the meta-combination method for extracting factors. The sampling method is also selected based on the entry and exit criteria of the prism method. In order to answer the research questions, 96 articles were examined and analyzed, which led to the extraction of 15 categories and 95 meaningful codes. The results showed that business management based on e-commerce includes the components of online sales, digital marketing, suppliers, leadership, product or service, human resources, organizational culture, customer, market, organizational structure, and organizing business based on E-commerce includes the components of technical dimension, organizational dimension, environmental dimension, economic dimension and financial dimension.

Introduction

Almost a quarter-century has passed since the commercial use of the Internet and the World Wide Web. During this period, the business landscape has changed rapidly. Large multinational companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and Uber, which were unknown until twenty years ago, have emerged as key players in the modern economy. In 2015, online sales accounted for 7.4% of total retail spending in the United States, the highest percentage since inception in 1999 (Pascoe et al., 2022).
The literature review indicates that the majority of previous research has taken a quantitative approach, and there is a gap in conducting qualitative research. Additionally, there has been little investigation into management concepts in the field of e-business. Examination of e-commerce concepts with their unique characteristics has expanded the boundaries of knowledge in the field of technological business. The expansion of e-businesses, thanks to the digital economy, has made managing and organizing these businesses a strategic necessity. Therefore, it is of great importance for managers and researchers to know about the factors that affect the proper managing and organizing of e-businesses. Therefore, this research tries to answer the question: What are the effective factors in the correct managing and organizing of e-businesses using the meta-synthesis approach?

Literature Review

Paying attention to the growth of technology and the increasing use of virtual world, the need of different strata of society for this space is increasing day by day. On the other hand, meeting these needs and exchanging information in this field has paved the way for high-yield investments (Mahdi and Hassan, 2021). In recent years, the start-ups that have formed by taking advantage of this opportunity and using virtual space technology, have been able to achieve considerable growth and dynamics (Wei et al., 2021).
E-business as one of the subcategories of information and communication technology has experienced high growth in the past, So in terms of organizational policy, most commercial institutions have been successful in accepting and using e-business to enter global markets and attract new customers (Chen et al., 2022).
 

Methodology

The present research seeks to identify the factors affecting the management and organization of e-commerce based businesses by relying on the study of published resources and documentation in this field؛ Therefore, in terms of purpose, research is practical and descriptive in terms of information collection. In this regard, due to the lack of clear and accurate explanation of the factors affecting the management and organization of e-commerce based businesses in all previous works، the method of meta-synthesis has been used. What are the factors affecting the management and organization of e-commerce businesses to answer the question؟ It was done and in order to explain its steps in e-commerce-based businesses (what?) has been written. The stages of the Meta-Synthesis approach are based on the model of Sandlowsky and Barroso (2006).

Conclusion

The results of qualitative studies using meta-synthesis approach extracted from previous research showed that the effective factors on the managing and organizing of e-businesses have 2 dimensions, 15 categories and 95 classified indicators. Managing e-business includes the components of online sales, digital marketing, suppliers, leadership, product or service, human resources, organizational culture, customer, market, organizational structure, and organizing e-business includes the components of technical dimension, organizational dimension, environmental dimension, economic dimension and financial dimension. Below is the conclusion of each question:
Question 1: What are the effective components for managing e- businesses?
Leadership: competence, powerful leadership, monitoring and evaluation, awareness and attitude of managers to e-business, knowledge management, integration management, senior management commitment, procurement management.

Product or service: response cycle speed in product supply, product data management, and product list updates regularly, product management in the sales channel, product catalog expansion, product transportation, product deliverable value, standard product quality control, nature Product, variety of products and services, product production level.
Human resources: human resources training, human resources management, staff expertise and skills, staff characteristics, human resources development.
Organizational culture: favorable organizational culture, organizational learning, customers' religion, intra-organizational communication, external communication, facilitating the payment process, sending goods on time, language of market customers.
Customer: successful customer relations, target and potential customer identification, customer retention, customer order processing, distribution channel, customer bargaining power, customer orientation, customer awareness and understanding of e-business, privacy protection, business acceptance Electronics by the customer, gaining customer trust, consumer protection.
Market: understanding customer needs, product distribution, timely delivery of goods and services, market size, business partners, competitive situation.
Organizational structure: organizational rules, technology, human resources, storage, customer information system, work process.
Suppliers: acceptance of electronic business by suppliers, bargaining power of suppliers, favorable relations with suppliers, external support.
Digital marketing: digital advertising, updating products, coordination in digital marketing, using new technologies in marketing
E-commerce sales: online market, e-retailer, direct sales - affiliates.

Second question: What are the effective components for organizing e-businesses?

Infrastructure or technical dimension: production schedule, transportation, website design, system integration and update, proper bandwidth and speed, low access cost, site availability.
Infrastructure or organizational dimension: operational flexibility, structural flexibility, strategic flexibility, high level of communication systems in the organization, management of external relations, visibility of information, creation of security and trust, innovation in technology, technological readiness.
Infrastructure or environmental dimension: digital architecture, information management, business dynamics, digital business speed.
Infrastructure or economic dimension: GDP, inflation rate, unemployment rate, economic stability.
Infrastructure or financial dimension: asset management, revenue model cost structure, investment.

Keywords: E-Commerce, Management, Organizing, Meta-Synthesis.
 
 
 

Keywords

• E-commerce
• management
• Electronic business
• Meta-synthesis

Main Subjects

• Management approaches in the field of smart