Abstract
Electronic business (e-business) is becoming a real alternative to traditional market channels, particularly for the organic product sector. Traditionally, this sector has faced a multitude of commercial obstacles that e-business can solve.
The present paper examines how the characteristics of the company’s manager – following upper echelon theory – and the number of office employees available can boost or limit this sector’s use of information and communication technology (ICT) and, specifically, electronic business.
This study, which used the fuzzy set Quality Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) method, confirms that for companies in this sector to make full use of e-business, the number of office employees available and the characteristics of the manager (age, educational background, knowledge of ICTs and view of the benefits of ICTs for product marketing) are important.
Funding source: This research was funded in part by the Regional Government of Andalusia (Spain) through the “Estrategias de mejora de la comercialización de losaceites de oliva” [Strategies to improve olive oil marketing] Excellence project (AGR-6132). The funding source had no involvement in the study design; in the data collection, analysis and interpretation; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.
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Bernal-Jurado, E., Medina-Viruel, M.J., Mozas-Moral, A. (2015). Human Resource Characteristics and E-Business: ANfsQCA Analysis. In: Palacios-Marqués, D., Ribeiro Soriano, D., Huarng, K. (eds) New Information and Communication Technologies for Knowledge Management in Organizations. GIKA 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 222. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22204-2_5
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