Yvon Van Den Boer
email: y.vandenboer@utwente.nl

Willem Pieterson
email: w.j.pieterson@utwente.nl

Rex Arendsen
email: r.arendsen@utwente.nl

Channel Choice in the G2B Context: Towards a Research Agenda

Keywords: channel choice, G2B interaction, service delivery, network perspective

Knowledge about e-governmental service delivery towards businesses in general and the use and choice of service channels in particular is lacking. Current insights are mostly based on research in the context of citizens. Important differences in both domains can be found in the more networked character of the business context. These differences show that research towards the business context is needed. In order to fill the gap we provide an overview of existing knowledge about channel choice in G2B context. To conclude, we present a research agenda for future research on this topic.

Introduction

Governmental organizations deliver services to citizens and businesses. Due to higher administrative burdens [START_REF] Arendsen | An Empirical Study on Business-to-Government Data Exchange Strategies to Reduce the Administrative Costs for Businesses[END_REF] and the complexity of their relationship with governments, businesses have more contacts with governmental agencies than citizens [START_REF] Arendsen | An Empirical Study on Business-to-Government Data Exchange Strategies to Reduce the Administrative Costs for Businesses[END_REF]. Given the importance of e-Services [START_REF]European Commission: The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015: Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government[END_REF] for businesses, the European Commission aims that by 2015, 80% of enterprises will have used e-government. In addition, businesses are expecting high quality in the governmental public service delivery [START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF]. Therefore, one would expect a large amount of attention in e-government research for the service delivery towards businesses in general, and the use and choice of service channels in particular. However, most of the research in channel choice focuses on citizens [START_REF] Pieterson | The use of service channels by citizens in the Netherlands: Implications for multi-channel management[END_REF][START_REF] Reddick | Citizens interactions with e-government: From the streets to servers?[END_REF][START_REF] Thomas | The new face of government: Citizens-initiated contacts in the era of e-government[END_REF].

Given the complexity of the Government to Business (G2B) relationship, it is questionable whether the findings of Government to Citizens (G2C) studies are fully applicable to the G2B context. This observation calls for insights on channel choice in the G2B context. However, almost no studies exist that examine entrepreneurial channel choice behavior. In order to fill this hole and reach the targets of the European Commission [START_REF]European Commission: The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015: Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government[END_REF], it is important to gain more knowledge about the channel choice behavior of businesses. The goal of this paper is to review the existing literature on channel choice in the G2B context to provide an overview of the current knowledge and the gaps in the scientific literature. Given the fact that the body of literature in the governmentcitizens context is more developed, we assess the differences between the domains to establish a research agenda for channel choice research in the G2B domain. This leads to the following research questions: RQ1 a : What is the current state of the art in theories of channel choice in the G2B context? RQ1 b : What is the current state of the art in research of channel choice in the G2B context? RQ2: How does the existing knowledge about channel choice in the G2B context differ from the knowledge in the G2C context? RQ3: How do the differences lead to different insights regarding channel strategies? RQ4: What are the main topics for future research about channel choice in the governmental public service delivery to businesses?

Based on our analysis and the answers to the research questions, we formulate a number of statements that form the basis of the proposed research agenda.

The first section of this paper gives an overview of the backgrounds of channel choice and provides an answer to RQ1 a . The second section of this paper discusses the existing studies on channel choice of businesses and answers RQ1 b . After that, at the end of the first two sections, an answer will be provided on the second and third research question. The final section discusses possibly interesting topics for upcoming research and will also present a research agenda, which also delivers an answer on RQ4.

Backgrounds of Channel Choice

In this section we discuss theories of channel choice, focused on both citizens and businesses, in order to answer the first research question (RQ1 a ) of this paper.

Channel Choice in the G2B Context

Before we look at channel choice behavior of businesses, we have to provide some definitions of channel choice and apply these to the context of businesses. A channel can be defined as "a customer contact point or a medium through which the firm and the customer interact" [8, p. 96]. In this research, we apply the same definition to G2B interactions. So, the firm in the definition is the governmental agency and the customer is a business. Channel choice is defined as "the choice of the customer to use a specific channel in a specific situation" [9, p. 9]. Again, the customer can be seen as a business in this context. We see channel choice as a bureaucratic confrontation between businesses and governmental agencies [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF]. Directing channel choice is defined as "the use of instruments to direct the behavior of citizens in the desired course" [11, p. 10]. In accordance with the other definitions, we can see citizens as businesses in the context of G2B interaction. Subsequently it is important to define a business. Jaffee [START_REF] Jaffee | Organization Theory: Tension and change[END_REF] describes a business as a network of individuals. This network of individuals can be partially influenced and depends on the environment. In addition, a business can be an individual or a group of individuals showing particular behavior [START_REF] Jansen | Dienstverlening aan bedrijven: Een conceptueel gedragsbeïnvloedingmodel[END_REF]. Besides, there is the law of individual differences [START_REF] Davis | Human behavior at work: Organizational behavior[END_REF]: 1) Individuals within a business differ in background, experiences, perceptions and expectancies, and 2) individuals react differently to situations. Last of all, we define (communication) networks as: "the patterns of contact that are created by the flow of messages among communicators through time and space" [15, p.3].

There are multiple ways to interact with the government. Which channel is chosen depends on the type of service [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF]. Table 1 shows that there are different types of channels, and that each type of channel has its own features. We cannot automatically apply these types of channels into the context of businesses. Hence, we have to make two important remarks about the abovementioned types of channels. The first remark is about the role of the intermediary. Changes in the society itself and changes in technology were leading towards the development of the network society [START_REF] Dijk | The Network Society: Social aspects of New Media[END_REF][START_REF] Castells | The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance[END_REF]. According to these changes G2B-relationships were getting increasingly horizontal and were no longer vertical, and information exchange is now fundamental to G2B relationships instead of power [START_REF] Castells | The rise of the network society[END_REF]. These developments changed the role of the intermediaries in the G2B context. Motivated by the use of Internet as a service provision channel new forms of intermediation were necessary [START_REF] Janssen | Improving Governmental Service Delivery: Disintermediation and Re-intermediation strategies for Multi-channel management[END_REF]. Pieterson [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] presented an intermediary as a personal type of channel in G2C interaction. Others argued, that from a governmental point of view, the intermediary is not a channel but a source of information [START_REF] Arendsen | An Empirical Study on Business-to-Government Data Exchange Strategies to Reduce the Administrative Costs for Businesses[END_REF]. An intermediary is more like an external source of information, which can get reached through certain channels. Complexity in the issuing of laws and rules, and sometimes also complexity in technology are supporting arguments for a relationship between a business and an intermediary [START_REF] Jaffee | Organization Theory: Tension and change[END_REF]. Other reasons, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, are an increasing focus on primary products and processes and gaining efficiency benefits [START_REF] Arendsen | On the Origin of Intermediary e-Government Services[END_REF]. Besides, Pfeffer and Salancik [START_REF] Pfeffer | The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective[END_REF] elucidated in their resource dependence perspective that organizations are embedded in an environment with other organizations and are to some extent dependent on resources of others in that environment [START_REF] Pfeffer | The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective[END_REF]. They are not completely self-contained. Businesses therefore specialize on their core competences and need others to fulfil secondary tasks. Those others can be seen as the external network of a business. For example, a contractor is specialized in building roads and as any other organization is obliged to fill in the taxes. The primary task of the contractor is building roads and they, usually, have little knowledge how to properly submit their taxes. Therefore, they need another organization that is specialized on accountancy. This firm of accountants is the intermediary party in G2B interaction. From a governmental point of view, the reasons to bring in intermediary organizations are reducing the amount of contact and data collecting points [START_REF] Allers | Administrative and Compliance Costs of Taxation and Public Transfers in the Netherlands[END_REF]. Intermediaries fulfil different roles in G2B interaction and can be seen as important partners in optimizing (e)governmental services towards businesses [START_REF] Arendsen | On the Origin of Intermediary e-Government Services[END_REF]. Besides these intermediary organizations (e.g. formal intermediaries), social intermediaries (e.g. friends and family) already fulfil an important role in optimizing e-government services towards citizens [START_REF] Millard | E-governance and E-participation: Lessons in promoting inclusion and empowerment[END_REF]. However, it is unknown if these social intermediaries also play an important role in the context of businesses. Although, Jansen et al. [START_REF] Arendsen | An Empirical Study on Business-to-Government Data Exchange Strategies to Reduce the Administrative Costs for Businesses[END_REF] distinguished different sources and they found that personal network (e.g. external advisors, friends, family, colleagues) can be important for businesses. So, an intermediary is a source of information in the G2B context. This is an important difference in comparison with the context of citizens and adds a networked character to the G2B context.

The second remark is about the rise of social media as the newest form of communication space [START_REF] Castells | Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Networks Society[END_REF]. Social media can be seen as a potential new channel for egovernmental service [START_REF] Moreira | E-Society and E-Democracy[END_REF] and the public sector is slowly adopting this new technology from the private sector [START_REF] Mergel | The Transformational Effect of Web 2.0 Technologies on Government[END_REF]. Democratic representatives already use social media to interact with citizens, for example during campaigns [START_REF] Moreira | E-Society and E-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Vergeer | Campaigning on Twitter: Twitter as a campaign tool in the general elections 2010 in the Netherlands[END_REF]. Social media have the potential to leverage a shift towards a more open and collaborative culture [START_REF] Moreira | E-Society and E-Democracy[END_REF], as well as filling the gap between politics and citizens [START_REF] Vergeer | Campaigning on Twitter: Twitter as a campaign tool in the general elections 2010 in the Netherlands[END_REF], increasing accountability [START_REF] Moreira | E-Society and E-Democracy[END_REF] and increasing political and societal engagement [START_REF] Moreira | E-Society and E-Democracy[END_REF]. Finally, new horizontal communication networks arise from social media and have the typical traits of the network society with regard to technical and organizational structure [START_REF] Castells | Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Networks Society[END_REF].

Hence, the number of channels and sources used in G2B interactions is higher than taken into account in current G2C studies. Besides, the current state of the art in G2C research does not reflect the actuality of businesses' channel choices. Further, G2B interactions have a far more networked character than G2C interactions, due to the role in all kinds of intermediaries and this networked character impacts their channel behavior.

Theories of Channel Choice

There are different perspectives on channel choice. The first is a rational perspective on channel choice [START_REF] Pieterson | Kanaalkeuze: klanten kiezenkanalen[END_REF]. This perspective is based on the Media Richness Theory [START_REF] Daft | Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organizational design[END_REF] and the Social Presence Theory [START_REF] Short | The social psychology of telecommunications[END_REF]. It assumes that people think in a rational way when they choose a channel. A few years later, the Social Influence Model [START_REF] Fulk | A social influence model of technology use[END_REF] and the Channel Expansion Theory [START_REF] Carlson | Channel expansion theory and end the experiental nature of media richness perceptions[END_REF] add a social and subjective side to the model, which implicates that there also are variables that influence channel choice unconsciously. These perspectives have often been criticized because of the lack of empirical support [START_REF] Teerling | Kanaalsturing: Ten gunste van het digitale kanaal[END_REF].

A recent development in channel choice research, made by Pieterson [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF], has resulted in a new theory of channel choice. This theory focuses on citizens in their interaction with the government. Pieterson [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] found that the process of channel choice is not as straightforward as researchers often assumed. When citizens need to choose a channel, they primarily rely on their habits and experiences. In the second instance, there is a rational elaboration. So, citizens use different strategies to make a channel choice when they want to contact the government [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF]. Which strategy is chosen depends on personal characteristics (e.g. age or education) as well as task (e.g. complexity of the goal) and channel characteristics (e.g. speed of a channel and its ease of use) [START_REF] Pieterson | Kanaalkeuze: klanten kiezenkanalen[END_REF]. In addition, situational (e.g. a persons need for closure, time and distance) [START_REF] Nicholson | One brand, three ways to shop: Situational variables and multichannel consumer behavior[END_REF] and emotional constraints influence the choice of a strategy.

Before we continue we have to make some remarks here. The abovementioned theory of channel choice [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] focuses on citizens. It is unknown if this theory can automatically be placed into the context of businesses. So first of all, research is needed to verify this theory on channel choice of businesses. Secondly, besides the influencing factors on channel choice Pieterson [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] determined, others argued that there are more influencing factors on channel choice. We discuss these factors and point out the most important differences in influencing factors on channel choice of businesses compared to citizens.

First of all, the channel choice of businesses depends on the type of business and thereby on the type of service [START_REF] Pieterson | Kanaalkeuze: klanten kiezenkanalen[END_REF]. It is therefore not unimaginable that characteristics of the organization, such as size, industry and age of the organization have influence on their channel choice behavior. So, besides to the aforementioned influence of personal characteristics [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF], the possible influence of organizational characteristics needs to be examined in research on channel choice of businesses in the G2B context.

Secondly, social factors also play an important role in channel choice behavior; because a sympathizer can influence someone else to use a certain channel [33, in 8]. From a social psychology perspective, researchers [START_REF] Postmes | Groepsnormen en gedrag: Sturing door sociale identiteit en dialoog[END_REF] presume that social norms in a group have influence on the behavior of individuals. This aspect of social influence can bring a new valuable perspective. Keeping in mind that channel choice behavior is an individual action [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF], we can imagine that in the business context employees influencing each other's channel choice behavior. In addition, [35, in 12] pointed out some important aspects of organizational reality: 1) structures, like social structural elements (norms, hierarchy etc.) 2) processes that are goal directed and 3) outcomes, the consequences of both structures and processes on employees, the organization itself and the whole society. The first aspect is important for channel choice behavior because the social structural elements have influence on behavior of the individual within the organization and it shows the difference between a citizen and an employee [START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF]. So in this case, the group can be seen as a network of individuals that together form a business. We call this the internal network of a business. Here we can identify the distinction between the individual as a citizen and the individual as part of the internal network of a business. Compared to channel choice of citizens, individuals get influenced in their channel choice by their colleagues within the internal network, which is the business. This is the third statement we make, which adds a network perspective to channel choice of businesses and shows the importance of gaining more specific knowledge about channel choice of businesses.

In order to answer the first research question (RQ1 a ) concerning the current state of the art of theories in channel choice of businesses, we draw these conclusions: First of all, there is little knowledge of theories in channel choice behavior of businesses in a governmental public service delivery context. Moreover, we only found a channel choice theory of Pieterson [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] concerning the channel choice behavior of citizens in a governmental service delivery context. Nevertheless, we cannot apply this theory straight into the business context, because the influence of the factors on channel choice is unknown in a business context. All in all, we found three important differences between the context of citizens and the context of businesses, which lead towards the following statements: St1 There are more channels and sources to take into account in G2B interaction compared to the current knowledge of channel choice in G2C interaction.

St2 The context of G2B interaction seems to have a more complex and networked character than the context of G2C interaction, because of the presence of intermediaries.

St3

The channel choice of an employee is influenced by the social norms within the internal network of a business, which gives the channel choice of businesses in a governmental service delivery context an even more networked character.

These differences lead towards the overall statement that the theory about channel choice of citizens cannot directly be applied to the business context. So, further research is needed to identify all the factors of influence regarding channel choice behavior of businesses. In the next section we will find out if we can gain more information about the factors influencing channel choice of businesses.

Research of Channel Choice in the G2B Context

In this section we review the few studies that have been conducted on businesses' channel choice (Table 2). In this section we discuss these findings to provide an answer on RQ1 b , RQ2 and RQ3. In this analysis, we focus on five key aspects of businesses' channel behavior; 1) general use and channel preference, 2) the reasons businesses have to choose a certain channel, 3) their perceptions of service channels, 4) the functions of channels and finally, 5) the selection of a certain information source.

First and foremost, researchers found that channel preference does not automatically lead to the use of that preferred channel [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF][START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF][START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF]. So, intentions are not always determined for behavior [START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF]. More specifically, the most preferred channel of businesses in a governmental context is the telephone, closely followed by the Internet [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF][START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF]. However, Van den Boom [START_REF] Boom | Ondernemers gaan voor e-overheid: Wat verwacht de ondernemer van de dienstverlening van de overhead? Den Haag[END_REF] found that email is preferred above the website. Here, the telephone is one of the least used channels. On the other hand, the channel most used by businesses is the telephone with the Internet in second place [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF][START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF][START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF]. So, there seems to be a switch between the telephone and Internet regarding preference and use of channels (Table 3). The second point concerns the motivations to use a channel. The most important motivations in general are ease and speed [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF]. For the phone, the design plays a role. The motivations to choose the desk are design and certainty. In addition to this, others found that other motivations to choose a certain channel are goal and situation [START_REF] Boom | Ondernemers gaan voor e-overheid: Wat verwacht de ondernemer van de dienstverlening van de overhead? Den Haag[END_REF][START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF]. We have to remark that these findings are based on questions about intentional behavior and are not based on actual behavior. As we saw before in this paper, intention and behavior are not always the same [START_REF] Jansen | Dienstverlening aan bedrijven: Een conceptueel gedragsbeïnvloedingmodel[END_REF]. [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF] There also is some knowledge about the perceptions of channels, from a business point of view. Businesses perceive the telephone as an appropriate channel for clarifying situations, using different languages, having a quick answer, reaching their goal and to obtain the best service and experience [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF]. Businesses also perceive the Internet as a cheap channel, appropriate for the searching of information. However, when we compare the perceptions of channels from businesses [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF] and citizens [START_REF] Pieterson | Kanaalkeuze: klanten kiezenkanalen[END_REF], we see a difference in perceptions of channels (figure 2.). Channel perceptions vary largely between the different groups, leading to different possibilities for service delivery.

Fig. 2. Channel perceptions: citizens [9] versus businesses

An explanation for the different perceptions can be found in the difference of the tasks in both contexts because of different service delivery [START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF]. Another important explanation can be derived from the more networked character at business level of G2B interaction, as we discussed in the theory section, compared to G2C interaction. More specifically, the presence of the internal network of businesses can lead towards different perceptions of channels by an individual as part of a business instead of being a citizen. For example, the individual as a citizen would go to the front desk for an answer on a specific question. In contrast, the individual as part of a business would use the telephone to get an answer on that question because all colleagues are doing the same and it is not common to go to the desk. In this case, the telephone is perceived as more useful in the business context instead of the front desk in the citizens' context. So, this leads to the statement that the channel perception of an employee is influenced by the social norm within the internal network (e.g. colleagues) of the business.

Regarding the fourth point, there is little knowledge about the functions businesses attribute to the channels Internet, telephone and desk. Businesses use the Internet as a channel when they have a general and simple question [START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF]. When questions get more specific and are more important for the businesses, they mostly use the telephone or the desk as a channel to interact with the government.

Besides, research shows that citizens sometimes use different channels to reach a specific goal [START_REF] Ebbers | Electronic government: Rethinking channel management strategies[END_REF]. For example, a citizen first looks for more information on a website, and afterwards he or she verifies the information at a service desk with faceto-face communication. Furthermore, others found that businesses also use different channels when they contact the government [START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF].

Finally, Jansen et al. [START_REF] Arendsen | An Empirical Study on Business-to-Government Data Exchange Strategies to Reduce the Administrative Costs for Businesses[END_REF] researched the source choice of businesses in a public service context. They distinguished between sources in ones personal network (e.g. external advisors, family and friends, internal and external colleagues), expert organizations (e.g. chamber of commerce, professional organizations), government organizations (e.g. national government and municipalities), portals and search engines. They found that compared to smaller businesses, larger businesses make less use of expert organizations and more use of their personal network. Finally, they also found that importance of the issue and the needed specificity of the information are important factors for source choice.

To conclude this section, we formulate an answer on the first research question (RQ1b): What is the current state of the art in research of channel choice in the G2B context? Presently, there are a few studies that researched the channel choice of businesses in the governmental public service delivery context. There is very little knowledge about the factors that influence channel choice of businesses. Moreover, most studies examined the measurable outcomes of channel choice, like channel preference and use, and provided some possible explanations of their findings. So, the current studies are just an exploration of channel choice of businesses and thorough research is needed. However, one remarkable finding is worth to mention here: the intention to use a certain channel, does not automatically lead to the use of that preferred channel [START_REF] Vos | Kanaalkeuze: Voorkeuren van ondernemers[END_REF][START_REF] Jansen | State of the art voor het kanaalkeuzegedrag van bedrijven[END_REF][START_REF] Wijngaert | Kanaalkeuze en bronkeuze van ondernemers in de publieke context en de rol van Antwoord© voor bedrijven daarin[END_REF].

The second research question (RQ2) was: How does the existing knowledge about channel choice in the G2B context differ from the knowledge in the G2C context? We found two important differences between channel choice of businesses and citizens that leads to the following statements:

St4 Businesses and citizens have different perceptions of channels. An explanation can be derived from the theory discussed in the first section. Compared to citizens, individuals as employees are influenced in their channel choice by an internal network (e.g. colleagues) of a business. There is a difference in context.

St5 Source of information seems to be a more important factor in the understanding of channel choice of businesses compared to citizens. The reason for this can be found in the more networked character of the business context compared to the context of citizens. In this case, we mean the external network of the business in their interaction with the government during service delivery.

With this in mind, we can formulate an answer on the third research question (RQ3):

How do the differences lead to different insights regarding channel strategies? So far, our study illustrates that the context of channel choice in governmental public service delivery to businesses is different from that to citizens, as the various statements make clear. So, the development of a multichannel strategy in channel choice for G2B interaction seems to be highly desirable. In this way, businesses will choose the right channel for the right service. However, the current theory and research about channel choice of businesses is very scarce. In the next section of this paper we will provide a research agenda on this topic in order to extend the knowledge of channel choice of businesses in the near future.

Conclusion: A Research Agenda

The goal of this paper is to review the existing literature on channel choice in the G2B context in order to provide an overview of the current knowledge and the gaps in the scientific literature. Our study shows that theories in the G2C context cannot directly be applied to the G2B context, because of crucial differences between both domains. Besides, the few studies conducted on G2B interaction are merely an exploration and thorough research is needed. In this section we give an overview of the statements and present research topics for future research in G2B interaction, which answers RQ4. The first topic on the research agenda focuses on the number of channels and sources used in G2B interaction. The following statement was presented: St1 There are more channels and sources to take into account in G2B interaction compared to the current knowledge of channel choice in G2C interaction.

First, keeping in mind that intermediaries can be seen as sources of information instead of a channel in G2B interaction, it is desirable to gain more insight regarding different kinds of sources in order to determine their influence on channel choice of businesses. Secondly, there is little knowledge about social media as potential new channel in G2B service delivery. Hence, it is essential to extend the understanding on: 1) the potential role of social media in G2B interaction during service delivery and 2) the current role of social media in other forms of interaction with the environment of businesses. In order to estimate the potential role of social media in the G2B context it is desirable to focus on the characteristics of social media in terms of richness (e.g. task/media fit) for example [START_REF] Daft | Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organizational design[END_REF]. Besides, perceived characteristics (e.g. relative advantage, compatibility) of social media could give more understanding about this topic [START_REF] Rogers | Diffusion of innovations (5th edition)[END_REF].

The second topic on the research agenda considers the influence of the external network of businesses on their choice behavior. The following statement was formulated:

St2 The context of G2B interaction seems to have a more complex and networked character than the context of G2C interaction, because of the presence of intermediaries

As we discussed before, it is preferable to bring in intermediary organizations, from both business and governmental perspectives. Source choice is a key factor here.

From the governmental perspective it will be desirable to identify important players in the network in order to become aware of the influence of intermediaries on the channel choice of businesses. However, there is little insight regarding the interaction between intermediaries and businesses and how it is influencing channel choice of businesses. In order to fill this research gap it is essential to gain knowledge about the external network of businesses and determine the influencing factors from the environment on the channel choice of businesses. Hence, a relevant perspective for future studies regarding channel choice behavior in the G2B context is to consider the interaction between businesses, intermediaries and governments as a social network. The (social) network analysis method can provide insight in the influence of relations between businesses and intermediaries on channel choice behavior in G2B interaction during service delivery [START_REF] Wasserman | Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications[END_REF]. Factors like structural equivalence, proximity, symmetry and trust are meaningful aspects in understanding and describing a network and the influences of relations on business behavior [START_REF] Monge | Theories of Communication Networks[END_REF].

The third topic of this future research agenda considers the internal network of businesses. We presented the following statement: St3 The channel choice of an employee is influenced by the social norms within the internal network of a business, which gives the channel choice of businesses in a governmental service delivery context an even more networked character.

The current literature provides little insight into the influencing factors on channel choice of employees. It is unknown to what extent business channel choice behavior is caused by individuals on the one hand, and the business itself on the other hand. For example, do employees have high autonomy to make their own choices, or are there rules for choosing a channel to contact the government? In other words, what are the influencing factors on the realization of business channel choice behavior? Relevant factors here seem to be social influence (e.g. direct statements, vicarious learning, norms for media behavior) and situational factors (e.g. individual differences, facilitating factors, constraints) [START_REF] Fulk | A social influence model of technology use[END_REF], in order to determine perceived influence of colleagues and supervisors on channel choice of an employee.

Concerning the abovementioned topics for future research the social influence model of Fulk et al. [START_REF] Fulk | A social influence model of technology use[END_REF] seems to be the most relevant theory for explaining channel choice of businesses. Furthermore, the theory of channel choice of citizens by Pieterson [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] could bring in some significant influencing factors regarding channel choice of businesses. However, it is not the case that existing theories provides us a complete view of the formation of today's business' channel choice behavior. Hence, personal characteristics (e.g. age, education) [START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF] and characteristics of businesses (e.g. size, industry and type of business) [START_REF] Jansen | Channel choice and Source choice of Entrepreneurs in a Public Organizational Context: The Dutch Case[END_REF] should be taken into account when businesses choose their channel in order to contact the government. Especially the presented network perspective can be of added value in order to understand channel choice of businesses. Monge and Contractor [START_REF] Monge | Theories of Communication Networks[END_REF] made a strong argument for multilevel theories of communication networks, which seems applicable to the G2B context, due to the possibility of linking several levels of networks. This network perspective can give more insight in the influence relationships with colleagues (internal network, organizational level) and other organizations (external network, interorganizational level) have on channel choice behavior of businesses in the context of G2B interaction. Thus, characteristics of the internal as well as the external network of businesses should be topics of interest.

Regarding the fourth research question (What are the main topics for future research about channel choice in the governmental public service delivery to businesses?) we can distinguish three main research topics: 1) the number of channels and sources to take into account in G2B interaction, 2) the role of the external network, with the presence of intermediaries, on the realization of business channel choice and 3) the role of the internal network in the realization of business channel choice. In order to examine these topics of future research the first step would be to explore the determinants of business' channel choice. The next phase would be to empirically validate these antecedents in order to conceptualize a model that explains channel choice behavior of businesses.

To summarize, the networked character of the business context indicates to be the factor that makes it a complex field, but it also seems to be the key towards understanding channel choice behavior of businesses. Therefore, the network perspective is of great added value in order to understand and predict channel choice behavior of businesses. Moreover, with regard to the ambitions of the European Commission [START_REF]European Commission: The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015: Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable & innovative Government[END_REF] it is even of greater value to extend the knowledge on channel choice behavior in order to optimize (e-)governmental service delivery to businesses.

Implications

Besides the presented research agenda, we can already provide some implications for governments in order to take the first step towards the understanding of business channel choice. First, the implication for governments is that the current channel strategies of citizens are not suitable to the context of businesses. Besides, it is essential to pay attention to the role of the intermediaries as a source in governmentbusiness interaction. In particular, a distinction between social and formal intermediaries possibly delivers a better understanding of different influences on choice behavior of businesses. Finally, the role of networks related to the intermediaries, are crucial in understanding business choice behavior. For these reasons, a multichannel strategy in channel choice of businesses in governmental service delivery is highly desirable.

Table 1 .

 1 Types of channels[START_REF] Pieterson | Channel choice: Citizens' channel behavior and public service channel strategy[END_REF]

	Channel type	Kind of interaction	Example(s)
	Personal	Face-to-face	Front desk, an intermediary
	Telephone	Telephonic
	Paper	Print media	Mail, fax
	Electronic	Textual	Websites, e-mail
		Audio-visual	Video chat

Table 2 .

 2 Overview of existing studies of channel choice behavior of businesses

	Subject	Authors	N
	Channel preference and/or use	De Vos [39]	115
		Van den Boom [40]	601
		Jansen & Pieterson [36]	323
		Van de Wijngaert et al. [4]	323
	Motivations to use a channel	De Vos [39]	115
		Van den Boom [40]	601
		Van de Wijngaert et al. [4]	323
	Perceptions of channels	De Vos [39]	115
	Functions of channels	Van de Wijngaert et al. [4]	323
	Source choice	Jansen et al. [1]	323

Table 3 .

 3 Channel preference versus Channel use

	Authors	Most preferred channel % Most used channel	%
	De Vos [39]	1. Telephone	42	1. Internet	49
		2. Internet	41	2. Telephone	39
	Jansen & Pieterson [36]	1. Telephone	65	1. Internet	53
		2. Internet	21	2. Telephone	30


Tero Pesonen
email: tero.pesonen@lut.fi

Kari Smolander
email: kari.smolander@lut.fi

Observations on e-Business Implementation Capabilities in Heterogeneous Business Networks

Keywords: e-Business, e-Business implementation, interoperability, IT implementation, inter-organizational systems

The objective of this qualitative study was to understand the factors that hinder large industry organizations in implementing e-Business solutions. The study included 4 organizations that operated in heterogeneous business networks consisting also of small partners. Interviews were conducted with managers of IT, purchasing and business development. The results indicate that the organizations faced a mixture of intertwined, accumulative challenges. Lack of IT resources and growing reliance on third parties had reduced IT expertise and made investments difficult. At the same time, e-Business projects were found to be very demanding to plan and execute, and with no e-Business knowledge or conscious e-Business strategies in place, the organizations were progressing haphazardly. The heterogeneous business environment also posed external challenges with partners having highly-disparate IT capabilities. Existing e-Business technologies appeared either inadequate for the needs of these networks or the appropriate technology was entirely missing.

1 Introduction E-Business can be defined as the use of information technology in support of more efficient business interactions between two or more organizations or organization units [START_REF] Pesonen | Quality Standards in e-Business Software Development[END_REF]. e-Business therefore relates not only to specific information technologies, but also to collaboration, either internal or inter-organizational. According to traditional collaboration schemes, transaction-oriented relationships between organizations in supply chains have led companies into trying to take advantage of one another in order to maximize their own utility. In such a context, companies see themselves as buyers of goods and sellers of value-added goods [START_REF] Karuranga | Measurements and Determinants of Supply Chain Collaboration[END_REF]. The first e-Business applications, based on the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standard [START_REF]UN/EDIFACT[END_REF]4,[START_REF] Salminen | EDIFACT for business computers: has it succeeded?[END_REF], aimed to make these basic, high-volume interactions taking place between business partners -for example, a buyer and seller -electronic and more automated. EDI standards replaced print documents sent by mail with electronic documents exchanged directly between IT systems. This allowed for removing manual work and errors and for reducing clerical costs [START_REF] Pesonen | Quality Standards in e-Business Software Development[END_REF][START_REF] Nurmilaakso | Adoption of e-business functions and migration from EDI-based to XML-based e-business frameworks in supply chain integration[END_REF][START_REF] Gamage | E-Business Impact on SCM in the apparel industry operating between a developing and a developed economy[END_REF]. Modern e-Business technologies, such as RosettaNet-like business-to-business integration (B2Bi) frameworks, have since built on these objectives by offering richer, platform neutral business data formats and support for fully-automatic business processes that can be integrated between collaborating partners [START_REF] Kotinurmi | E-Business framework enabled B2B integration[END_REF][START_REF] Nurmilaakso | XML-based e-Business frameworks and standardization[END_REF][START_REF] Medjahev | Businessto-business interaction issues and enabling technologies[END_REF]. Recently, Web Services and other cloud computing technologies have also emerged, but not so much as direct e-Business tools or applications as alternative e-Business development platforms that allow software to span traditional organizational boundaries [START_REF] Alonso | Web Service Concepts, Architectures and Applications[END_REF][START_REF] Bih | Service oriented architecture (SOA) a new paradigm to implement dynamic ebusiness solutions[END_REF][START_REF] Khatibi | E-commerce in Malaysia: Perceived Benefits and Barriers[END_REF].

Despite these technological developments, e-Business has failed to reach the level of sophistication and adoption originally predicted [START_REF] Pesonen | Quality Standards in e-Business Software Development[END_REF]. While the use of internet for business has become ubiquitous in developed economies, and wholly new business models, such those made prevalent by Google and other internet-based companies, have become pervasive [START_REF] Glissmann | IT Service-Oriented Investment Analysis, A Comparison of In-House versus Software-as-a-Service Deployment Solutions[END_REF], the actual business interactions between organizations have changed slowly [13]. Deep supply chain collaboration has failed to materialise [START_REF] Barratt | Understanding the meaning of collaboration in the supply chain[END_REF], and still only a portion of the industry makes use of any kind of e-Business technology at all [START_REF] Pesonen | Quality Standards in e-Business Software Development[END_REF]13,[START_REF] Li | Enterprise interoperability research roadmap[END_REF].

In this study, our objective is to observe large industry organizations in order to understand what the factors are that hinder them in implementing e-Business solutions for more efficient B2B integration. The organizations represent traditional, non-IT industries and operate in heterogeneous business networks that comprise also smaller suppliers and buyers. Our study is qualitative, as understanding e-Business implementation constraints requires exploration in socio-technical real-world contexts.

We have structured our paper as follows: We first review the related research in chapter 2. We define our research objective and explain our research process in chapter 3. We then present our findings in chapter 4 and conclude our paper by discussing and summarizing the results in chapter 5.

Related research

One of the drivers of modern e-Business research is the inefficiency caused by lack of interoperability, shown first as countable costs by [START_REF]Interoperability cost analysis in the US automotive supply chain[END_REF][START_REF] Brunnermeier | Interoperability costs in the US Automotive Supply Chain[END_REF] in a series of studies concerning the American auto industry. According to Legner & Lebreton [START_REF] Legner | Business Interoperability Research -Present Achievements and Upcoming Challenges[END_REF], interoperability research can be roughly classified as either explorative, which involves identifying interoperability factors or describing the status of interoperability in a given domain, or constructive, which involves developing solutions for overcoming interoperability challenges.

Modern e-Business interoperability research often focuses on SME's (Small and mid-sized enterprises), whose slow e-Business adoption [13,[START_REF] Li | Enterprise interoperability research roadmap[END_REF][START_REF] Ramayah | SME e-readiness in Malaysia: Implications for Planning and Implementation[END_REF] has received a lot of attention. This is because SME's comprise the majority of enterprises in most economies and hence have a major influence on the economy's efficiency (OECD [START_REF]OECD Small and Medium Enterprise Outlook[END_REF]). On the other hand, studies in e.g. the UK, Sweden, and New Zealand, [START_REF] Fillis | Factors impacting on e-Business adoption and development in the smaller firm[END_REF][START_REF] Beheshti | The benefits of e-Business adoption: an empirical study of Swedish SMEs[END_REF][START_REF] Rashid | E-Commerce Technology Adoption Framework by New Zealand Small to Medium Size Enterprises[END_REF] respectively, have shown that SME's are not a homogeneous group but vary greatly both in e-Business use as well as in the factors that influence them in adopting or rejecting e-Business technology. Moreover, these factors do not necessarily reflect the companies' business strategy or objectives any way, but may relate to e.g. an individual manager's influence [START_REF] Fillis | Factors impacting on e-Business adoption and development in the smaller firm[END_REF], or to available resources and know-how [START_REF] Abid | Experienced Benefits and Barriers of e-Business Technology Adoption by SME suppliers[END_REF][START_REF] Pulli | Factors Affecting the Adoption of E-Invoicing in South Karelia[END_REF][START_REF] Olatokun | e-Commerce Technology Adoption by SMEs in Botswana[END_REF]. Studies in developing economies (e.g. [START_REF] Khatibi | E-commerce in Malaysia: Perceived Benefits and Barriers[END_REF][START_REF] Olatokun | e-Commerce Technology Adoption by SMEs in Botswana[END_REF]) agree for most part with these findings and emphasize that each SME should be viewed as unique with its own set of e-Business implementation issues [START_REF] Pesonen | Quality Standards in e-Business Software Development[END_REF].

Research on e-Business adoption at large and multinational companies (MNC's) is more limited and tends to also be more industry-sector specific. Machner et al. [START_REF] Macher | E-business and disintegration of the semiconductor industry value chain[END_REF], Hetemäki & Nilsson [START_REF] Hetemäki | Information Technology and the Forest Sector. Final Report by the IUFRO Task Force[END_REF], and Mustonen et al. [START_REF] Mustonen | Digitizing Business Processes in the Intersection of Energy[END_REF], for example, have analyzed e-Business drivers specifically in the semiconductor and forest industry. Although industry-specific, the findings reflect MNC's as more interested in a strategic, long term business-integration-driven approach that goes beyond single e-Business applications. Direct comparative studies between SME's and large enterprises (e.g. [START_REF] Daniel | An Exploratory Comparison of Electronic Commerce Adoption in Large and Small Enterprises[END_REF][START_REF] Byrne | Does size matter? A study comparing e-business implementation in large and small companies in Australia[END_REF]) consider much lighter e-Business approaches, such as various kinds of web commerce. The studies indicate that SME's are more nimble and flexible adopters of light-weight e-Business applications, and seem to benefit from investing in them, sometimes even more than their larger counterparts. The use and development of the more demanding B2Bi technologies is, however, typically restricted to larger organizations, which have more resources and more opportunities to profit from supply chain integration [START_REF] Kotinurmi | E-Business framework enabled B2B integration[END_REF][START_REF] Pesonen | Quality Standards in e-Business Software Development[END_REF][START_REF] Tan | Accelerating Global Supply Chains with IT-Innovation[END_REF]. This is further confirmed by earlier EDI studies [START_REF] Da Silva | Challenges for EDI Adoption by Small and Medium-size Enterprises[END_REF][START_REF] Andersen | B2B E-commerce Diffusion: The Efficacy of Institutional Discourse[END_REF] and claimed by the RosettaNet consortium [START_REF] Cartwright | RosettaNet Automated Enablement. Material Composition Workshop[END_REF].

Constructive e-Business research remains also SME-oriented. Here the European Union funded research projects are most notable. The ATHENA project [START_REF] Anastasiou | ATHENA Interoperability Framework (AIF)[END_REF] (built on a number earlier projects) was a major effort to build a common European enterprise interoperability framework that heeds not only ICT, but also knowledge, business and semantic interoperability, and could therefore be used in gathering further research results and for developing interoperable services. It remains unclear, however, what concrete outcomes the ATHENA platform has contributed. The ITAIDE [START_REF]ITAIDE Project[END_REF] project has proposed cross-border e-Business (eGovernment) solutions while the GENESIS project [START_REF]GENESIS Project[END_REF] developed an architecture and a process-and-document modeling approach for allowing SME's to carry out e-Business activities with other SME's, public sector and financial institutions via the GENESIS system. It appears that no SME-to-MNC B2Bi is directly supported. Finally, efforts to simplify e-Business standards testing have been also carried out in global co-operation [START_REF]CEN workshop Agreement on: Feasibility Study on e-Business Interoeprability Test Bed (GITB). CEN/ISSS Interoperability e-Business Forum[END_REF].

According to Legner & Lebreton [START_REF] Legner | Business Interoperability Research -Present Achievements and Upcoming Challenges[END_REF], analysis on the strategic, organizational and operational issues that relate to interoperability are still missing despite the gamut of research already carried out. The authors argue that although projects such as ATHENA have established a foundation for interoperability research, the focus still remains too technology oriented. By the same token, Smolander & Rossi [START_REF] Smolander | Conflicts, Compromises, and Political Decisions[END_REF], who observed an enterprise-wide e-Business architecture development process, found the interplay between the architecture and the organization, and the inevitably raising conflicts and compromises, as more important to manage than mere technical factors. The distinction between enterprise architecture [START_REF] Ross | Enterprise Architecture as Strategy; Creating a Foundation for Business Execution[END_REF] and modern, large e-Business architecture appears increasingly intangible if not already non-existent. Nevertheless, in view of the more recent COIN and COMMIUS projects [START_REF]Coin IP Enterprise Collaboration & Interoperability[END_REF][START_REF] Ling-Hong | Commius architecture (final version)[END_REF], the technologydriven approach persists at least in current interoperability research.

Our initial objective was to study e-Business implementation requirements for specific supply chain networks. We quickly found, however, that the body of knowledge in this area was limited. We were interested in large organizations that operate in heterogeneous business networks comprising also a number of much smaller suppliers and buyers with highly-disparate business profiles, IT investment capabilities and IT implementation skills. As we discuss in our review of the pertinent literature, e-Business research has mainly focused on SME-to-SME or otherwise very homogeneous, "flat", domains, treating small and large organizations often separately or disregarding the concrete constraints that B2Bi activities may impose on a heterogeneous business environment. As an example of this, a large paper mill attempts to leverage e-Business solutions, but does not succeed because the majority of its partners, who are SME's, are unable to implement and operate the technology.

Our research objective is, therefore, to understand what are the factors that hinder large traditional industry organizations in implementing e-Business solutions. More precisely, we want to investigate and characterize the issues present in these organizations or their business environments that have a negative effect on the organizations' ability to develop or adopt new B2Bi solutions or to make effective use of existing ones. In particular, we want to understand the role of the organizations' business environment in e-Business adoption -our study observes a heterogeneous business network consisting also of small partners. This was in our view necessary in order to understand all the dimensions of real world B2Bi schemes.

Research Methodology

e-Business implementation is a process of developing complex, socio-technical systems that involve various stakeholders, IT resources, business processes and objectives influencing one another. Understanding this process requires exploration in real world contexts, which suit well for studying with qualitative methods [START_REF] Seaman | Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of Software Engineering[END_REF].

We used as our qualitative research approach Grounded Theory (GT) as described by Strauss and Corbin in [START_REF] Strauss | Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques[END_REF]. Originally described by Glaser and Strauss in [START_REF] Glaser | Discovery of Grounded Theory[END_REF] for social sciences, the method has since been employed also for research in various fields owing to its ability to discover novel concepts and develop new theories. GT bases the theory building on induction: Instead of encouraging apriori theorization and hypotheses, the method rather instructs the researcher to start directly with data collection and to arrive, by means of explicitly-specified analytic steps, at a specific theory only based on what has been developed from the data, not on what has been expected or wanted to prove with the data.

The first analysis phase, open coding, involves discovering and labeling concepts that might denote commonalities in the data; concepts that stand for "what is going on" in the part under analysis are considered particularly fruitful for further scrutiny. The concepts are then assorted by assigning them properties. In the second phase, axial coding, the concepts are further developed by defining their relationships. A crucial tool for this is various comparisons that aid in discovering commonalities and differences, and the properties of these variations. GT provides a set of mechanisms for carrying out these comparisons, but it is always the researcher's creativity that in the end plays the main role in the analysis. The third and final phase is selective coding, where a final core category is derived from the fully developed categories and thus theory is created.

Case Organizations and interviewees

Our first criterion in selecting the case organizations was that we wanted them to be located in a limited geographical region where the number and type of potential suppliers as well as the operational environment were similar. The organizations also had to be large enough to be able to impose a notable influence in the region by attracting around them a network of smaller suppliers specialized in serving large industry. Since the heterogeneity of business partners was an important factor for us, we decided to include one large public sector organization along with industry representatives. Existing research has paid some attention to the needs of public sector in relation to e-Business development (e.g. [START_REF] Tan | Accelerating Global Supply Chains with IT-Innovation[END_REF][START_REF]PEPPOL[END_REF][START_REF]GENESIS Project[END_REF]), but not specifically in the context of carrying out day-to-day business interactions -for example, as a purchaser of services and supplies. On this score, we treated the public sector organization similarly to the industry representatives.

Table 1 lists the case study organizations and the position of the interviewees in each organization. Nine manager-level interviewees were selected from both business and IT departments based on preliminary discussions with the organizations. The interviewees were carried according to a list of prepared, open-ended questions that were similar to all participants albeit with slight differences in emphasize depending on the interviewee's background. In total, we accumulated approximately 11½ hours of interview material, which was then transcribed to text for analysis. In addition to the interviews we also participated in a meeting involving the managers in Organization D interested in hearing and discussing e-Business issues in relation to their newly-started ERP development project. We used this opportunity for questioning and for observing the discussion. The model was constructed to present the highest level categories resulting from selective coding so that IT resources, e-Business knowledge and Business environment remained the topmost subcategories of the core category e-Business implementation obstacles. Similarly, each subcategory contained a set of its own sub categories, labeled here as factors.

The analysis started with no explicit a priori categories. The interview data were first scanned for words and phrases describing interesting phenomena or common occurrences, with particular emphasis on activity -"what is happening here?" or "what action does this pertain to?". With a number of such labels discovered, we were able to categorize them with comparisons, creating new categories, such as "manual procurement process" and "electronic procurement process", which, while belonging to a yet higher level category, differed on a key dimension of one of their shared properties. We carried both open and axial coding more or less simultaneously. In developing the core category and our theory, we abstracted the categories by developing their relationships until we had arrived at 11 factors, belonging to the three high level categories. We derived the factor relationships, shown in the model by arrows, from the category relationships by asking "Do the properties of this category beget any of the major properties of another category?"

We explain our findings according to this model. First, however, we describe the organizations' business environment and e-Business implementation status at the time of the study in order to set the context for our model.

The current status of e-Business in the case organizations.

The business environment is highly heterogeneous. All case organizations operate not only with other large buyers and suppliers, but also with a network of local SME's that are specialized in offering the kind of supplies and services the local large industry needs but does not produce itself. These supplies can be divided into materials and products (Organization A) and into maintenance work and related services (Organizations B, C and D). Other kind of out-sourced services, such as logistics or IT, are primarily acquired from larger providers outside the region.

The business environment is increasingly competitive. The industry organizations (mills) export almost all their production. Competition in their export markets has increased noticeably with globalization, forcing the companies to change their business strategy. B and C have launched drastic cost cutting programs to regain operational efficiency. Organization D, in contrast, has steered away from direct price competition and chosen as its strategy to make special-grade, per-client-tailored products that also incorporate services for additional value. All organizations have chosen to outsource more and more of the supporting day-to-day business operations (e.g. maintenance work, IT, logistics).

The organizations have successfully adopted electronic invoicing. Electronic invoicing solutions replace printed invoice documents, traditionally sent via mail, with electronic documents that can be exchanged between information systems and processed digitally. For the case study organizations, electronic invoicing has become pervasive quickly. During the last two years organizations B, C and D in particular have grown the share of eInvoices to more than half of all invoices sent or received; and B and C will soon start requiring all their purchases to be invoiced electronically. A and D, in contrast, do not yet want to impose such demands but are rather content to only promoting eInvoicing to partners and offering help in its adoption.

The objectives in using eInvoicing are improved efficiency via reduced manual work and better transparency via more integrated, automated business processes. It also allows for integrating the handling of invoicing data with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which makes it possible to monitor work flows more easily and thus make orders and their status more transparent and easier to predict and plan.

By using their influence, the large organizations have not only been able to persuade, but in the case of B and C and partly D, have also been able to dictate the rules by which this technology is to be used in the immediate business network for their benefit.

Use of other forms of e-Business was limited. Organization C has made some use of the forest-industry-specific B2Bi standard in business document exchanges involving other large industry partners. The company has also worked with large partners on tailored interfaces that offer access to its IT services. Organizations A and B have attempted to develop e-Business portals for interactions with SME partners, but these projects have either been postponed due to budget issues or they have been incorrectly focused due to insufficient requirements analysis.

Impeding factors for e-Business implementation capability IT Resources

Insufficient IT resources are a major e-Business implementation obstacle. The costcutting strategy the industry organizations in particular have entered has applied also to IT. This has led every organization to outsourcing all but the most essential day-today IT administration and development activities. The trend has become pervasive: Even for IT tasks not (or not yet) outsourced, the staff has been or is to be reduced as low as possible and may be moved off-site for consortium-wide, centralized IT management -this is particularly true in organizations B and C -and where special expertise is to be needed, it will be acquired from outside as necessary instead of keeping (expensive) IT expertise on a regular pay-roll. This has limited the IT expertise the organizations have at their disposal.

"Within this organizational unit, there is only I and [another manager name] left who can any more give answers to such questions [pertaining to IT and e-Business]." "We've been talking about this [outsourcing and centered IT management] for some years already... the objective of course is to make everything a lot easier, so we need to keep fewer IT experts. And we need not hire new IT people when employees retire. Yes, cutting costs is driving all this." "Instead of doing these [IT tasks] ourselves, we can now buy them as a service from [provider]."

Outsourcing. While believed to cut costs without impeding on IT capability, outsourcing of IT appears to have made, with less in-house IT expertise available, the organizations increasingly dependent on third party providers, who have thus gained more control on what kind of systems are used and how they are built and tailored. These providers do not necessarily share the same interests as defined in the organizations' IT strategies, and do not hence promote new IT paradigms, such as e-Business technologies. Rather, they may support the development of systems that make e-Business-related integration tasks actually more difficult due to undocumented interfaces and missing planning for future expandability. There was evidence of this already having an effect.

"We are sure [the system provider] will take care of these aspects... that the XML support will be OK in the new system. I am sure they understand this need and know how to handle it [according to our requirements now and in the future]." These needs related to the XML-support had not been communicated to the provider, nor was the person able to express them in anything but very vague terms.

"The problem with this [provider] system is that it is difficult to make it work for this [e-Business use], as it is has always been difficult to read data from it [in any other way than the provider wants] and even today we find it difficult to write data into the database component." These problems had affected this organization's earlier e-Business project.

Inability to take initiatives. Reduced IT resources and the reliance on outsourcing has led to an inability to invest in long term objectives and to discover and take initiatives whose goals lie beyond the day-to-day "sphere of focus" -that is, to make use of IT proactively in order to create new usage scenarios or to support the business strategy in novel ways. This contributes in particular to issues discussed under "e-Business knowledge" This is also in contrast to organizations B and C's past strategy for developing IT as a long term tool for achieving the industry leadership.

"The primary objective for any IT project we can implement today [heeding the costs-saving strategy] has to be... it has to be able to not only to remove costs, or to make something "better"... that is not enough... the project has to result in jobs being eliminated... now. Unless you can show that, it won't be financed."

e-Business Knowledge

Organizations are lacking e-Business knowledge and therefore progress haphazardly with no conscious e-Business strategies defined. Lack of e-Business knowledge. Our interviews showed that the notion of e-Business was not only vague and poorly understood, but it was also treated disparately amongst the interviewees. Although all interviewees were somewhat familiar with the term or its variants, each gave a unique definition for what they believed e-Business meant. For example, e-Invoicing, which all interviewees were familiar with, was treated as a separate technology and often only associated with other e-Business technologies upon questioning on possible links between the organization's conceivable future e-Business objectives. In general, the interviewees approached the topic from a point of view closely tied to their past, professional experience and their current position in the organization.

"In my view e-business is... I understand it as belonging to the marketing side... As in our industry there was this hype some 10 years ago that all buying and selling would go to online auction and market sites." "It is, I think, transmitting data in an electronic form via internet. So there is less need for manual work when the data are transmitted. And it enables huge data storages which people can peruse.

" "It means that we make the transactions between our partners electronicbetween both clients and suppliers. This can be done in two ways: [long technical explanation omitted]"

Haphazard e-Business development steps. Lack of e-Business knowledge has resulted in no conscious organization-wide e-Business strategies defined. The organizations were rather "groping" their way toward something undefined in small, haphazard steps rather than following a organizationally-agreed-on path leading towards specific objectives. The ability to discuss and introduce e-Business-related topics to day-to-day business planning relied on few, select individuals and their interest or motivation to work on the topic and influence the organization. Since e-Business had remained so little understood, managers could also easily disregard it with impunity in view of their superiors and peers.

Lack of e-Business knowledge and organizational understanding on its implications had together further led to the incorrect view that e-Business is simply an IT topic, while in fact it involves, due to its spanning the whole organizational architecture, inevitably not only IT, but the whole gamut of business processes, related business objectives and information systems. Successful e-Business development has to heed know-how across business units and involve the knowledge of domain experts.

Consequently, e-Business projects are difficult to manage. The danger that an e-Business project fails due to improper requirements analysis seems alarmingly high. Organizations C and B in particular expressed great concern over this matter and even appeared wary of starting e-Business initiatives due to the experience of how difficult it is to manage e-Business requirements. For organization A, an e-Business project being developed at the time of the study appeared to be incorrectly focused due to a flawed and partially-skipped analysis phase. The analysts had incorrectly relied on their previous business and IT experience and this way made innocent-looking, "selfevident" presumptions that were inappropriate in an e-Business domain.

"That project they are developing for us... well it is completely useless from our requirements point of view. We would rather need the catalog service kind of solution … Lacking it is actually a bottleneck for us."

"The [light-weight e-Business project the mill has tried to develop] has been again postponed; now it was piloted but the pilot failed -the system had been specified incorrectly. They've tried to fix it again and again but they don't seem to get it working right … and it is now being re-analyzed for the requirements and then we reimplement it, but only in case it won't be too expensive."

Business environment

The organizations' business network poses external factors that make implementing e-Business solutions more difficult.

A heterogeneous business network consists of partners that have disparate e-Business implementation capabilities. This can be a major hindrance. SME partners especially are notable here, as the interviewees had a strong opinion that their SME partners would be incapable of adopting such e-Business technologies as would allow the large organizations to make also other transactions than just invoices electronic. In these transactions product orders, inquiries, confirmations etc. would be exchanged as standardized, electronic business documents between each partners' information systems. Electronic invoicing solutions have been able to overcome this barrier because there were third party services available which the SME partners could tap into in case they were unable or unwilling to implement the technology. There were no such solutions available for other, more demanding B2Bi technologies.

Other large organizations can also pose problems. As C, for example, has experienced, there is no guarantee that the other partner, no matter what size, is yet capable or willing to participate in electronic transactions beyond eInvoicing. Individual managers may wield significant power over such decisions. Their influence is fueled by the already mentioned factors of lack of e-Business knowledge and lack of e-Business strategies.

Insufficient partner knowledge. The organizations are poorly acquainted with most of their partners' IT capability and e-Business-related needs. This is particularly true with SME's, but it is also a limitation with larger partners. In the past, the organizations have not needed to develop this kind of knowledge. But e-Business solutions require for most profit for the partners to co-operate, and lack of knowledge on possible mutual interests, or areas where both organizations or even a group of organizations could benefit from working together on e-Business implementation, affects the network's ability to collaborate.

"About our SME partners..

. well, we know nothing of what is going on there, what they can do, what they need. It is a completely blank area for us!"

There is also resistance to change in the business network. This is, in part, attributed to a kind of chicken and egg situation: There is limited motivation even for a large organization to invest in and develop capability for something that others are not (apparently) yet doing -the fear is it might turn out to an entirely wrong standard or approach as the technology "catches on someday." Other organizations may also want to pursue only their selected e-Business standard.

"We see little activity regarding this amongst our partners... I feel they tend to think, let's wait and see. So there is perhaps some resistance to change due to our industry sector." "It may be the partner already has another standard in use, and if they are a customer... a large one... we just have to go by that standard and implement a mapping between that and our own."

"For some customers our industry is not their primary business, so they see no incentive to implement our industry standards."

The mills thought that in their traditional industry sectors it would be difficult to gain competitive advantage with e-Business technologies today. They also pointed out that their industries are rather followers than early adopters or IT technology drivers. Therefore competitors -internal or external to the network -were not expected to make any quick, major breakthroughs either, or gain unexpected competitive advantage through B2Bi.

"This [e-Business development] is 'business as usual' for us [in our industry]. No one here gains a competitive advantage from it … it is something we all just need to eventually do."

Finally, the current e-Business technologies fit poorly for these heterogeneous e-Business environments. The technologies seem aimed at different kind of networks where partners are more alike both in terms of their implementation capability and e-Business needs. The current B2Bi frameworks tend to be industry sector standards, yet in these networks cross-industry partnerships are common. This may pose more work on one of the partners, to whom the standard is new or little used. Even when the partners can operate with an "industry native" standard, they still need to agree on a large number of details pertaining to the documents being exchanged, and this raises the bar for engaging in such transactions with partners with whom only a limited number of transactions is expected. There have also emerged e-Business development needs for these networks that are entirely beyond the objectives of currently-available tools.

"[Even when we need not map between standards], so we can use papiNet, the papiNet document, it contains a few mandatory fields and then a large number of optional fields that have to be nonetheless agreed on, whether the field is used and how it is used and so forth and this has to be done always with every partner... it is a standard but it is not, like, throughout in that sense." "It is not realistic with SME's. On the other hand, the profile of our SME and larger suppliers is so different, the volumes on SME's are small and their business is more like services. So there has perhaps not been a business case for us to invest resources into developing B2Bi with these partners." "We've been thinking about an electronic procurement system, but … we are missing a tool/technology for managing the product data as a universally accessible catalogue or similar [e-Business service]. [Therefore] We cannot move on with this concept."

Discussion and conclusions

Our research objective was to investigate and characterize the issues that hinder large traditional non-IT industry organizations in implementing e-Business solutions. Our intent was to expand current research by, first, involving a class of organizations that has previously been little studied, and, secondly, by taking into account the heterogeneous nature of the business environment in which the organizations collaborate.

Our findings indicated that the organizations were facing not any single, dominant obstacle but rather a mixture of closely-intertwined, accumulative challenges. Lack of IT resources and expertise had resulted in the organizations' relying increasingly on outsourcing. But this seemed to rather limit than support their ability to take proactive, long-term IT development initiatives such as would be required for implementing e-Business. The organizations were also lacking e-Business knowledge and thus had no conscious, organizationally-agreed e-Business strategies defined. As a result, they were progressing with uncertain, haphazard steps that supported no specific e-Business objectives. A major factor here was that without sufficient resources and knowledge, e-Business development projects, which appear particularly challenging for requirements engineering, had became very demanding to carry out. Finally, the heterogeneous business environment posed additional challenges. The business partners had highly-versatile e-Business implementation capabilities, which impeded e-Business initiatives in the network. The available e-Business technologies also fit poorly for use in this environment.

In total, we established 11 factors, which we categorized under three higher level classes -IT resources, e-Business knowledge and the business environment -the first two of which were mainly internal to the organizations, while factors under the business environment were external and not in the organization's immediate control. We developed the factors into a model showing their relationship and the order of severity.

In view of earlier e-Business research, we were surprised to find that some e-Business adoption barriers associated with SME's, such as insufficient resources and knowledge [START_REF] Abid | Experienced Benefits and Barriers of e-Business Technology Adoption by SME suppliers[END_REF][START_REF] Pulli | Factors Affecting the Adoption of E-Invoicing in South Karelia[END_REF][START_REF] Olatokun | e-Commerce Technology Adoption by SMEs in Botswana[END_REF], and the influence wielded by a single manager in e-Business decision making [START_REF] Fillis | Factors impacting on e-Business adoption and development in the smaller firm[END_REF], could also afflict very large organizations when driven to slim down IT spending to minimum. The organization's size alone will not guarantee e-Business implementation capability.

We consider the issues discovered about the heterogeneous business environment to be very important. The current e-Business technologies, such as B2Bi framework standards, fit poorly for this kind of environment due to the wide variety of e-Business implementation capabilities found there and the propensity of these networks to span industry sectors. This is not surprising, as, according to our best knowledge, heterogeneous business environments have not been studied previously from e-Business requirements' point of view. Instead, the B2B interaction environment is often expected to be SME-to-SME oriented or otherwise "flat" and more homogeneous than we found it to be. It is possible that this explains some of the difficulties industry elsewhere, too, has experienced in moving towards deeper business-to-business integration.

Our plan is to follow up this research by further exploring the SME-MNC B2B interactions, which pose the most difficult interoperability obstacle. We want to understand the constituents of these B2B scenarios and specify concrete interoperability requirements for more feasible e-Business implementations in the case study networks.

Table 1 .

 1 Case organizations. Business implementation capability. We have organized the specific factors under three generic classes -IT resources, e-Business knowledge and Business environment, of which IT resources and e-Business knowledge are internal to the organization and in its own control. Each high level category manifests the implications its sub factors impose. The high level factors are ordered according to importance from left to right so that IT resources has, in general, more severe impact than Business environment. The influence between categories and individual factors is marked with arrows.

	Label	Description	Interviewee
	A	City organization. Provides public	IT manager
		services.	Head of Purchasing
			Financial director
	B	A paper and pulp mill part of a global	Head of maintenance services
		wood processing company.	Head of mill services
	C	A wood products mill part of a global	IT manager
		wood processing company.	Head of purchases
	D	A steel mill part of an international	Head of business developments
		consortium.	IT manager
			Meeting with other managers