The impact of host country regulatory quality on the value creation process in e-business supply chains

The use of e-business (EB) applications has reshaped an organisations' supply chain structure. EB applications have enabled supply chain organisations to integrate their upstream and downstream supply chain processes to reach higher performance outcomes. Employing the resource-based view and contingency perspective as theoretical anchors, we propose and test a model of the relationship between EB applications, supply chain integration and financial performance that is moderated by a country's regulatory quality. Cross-country data have been collected from 637 organisations through the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey research initiative. We hypothesise that the efficacy of the EB value creation process depends on the regulatory quality of the country that companies are located in. Results indicate that EB has a stronger impact on supply chain integration and supply chain integration has a stronger impact on financial performance, if the companies are situated in countries with high quality regulatory levels.