Strategy, Resource Orchestration and E-commerce Enabled Social Innovation in Rural China

Abstract

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Poverty alleviation through government‐led e‐commerce development in rural China: An activity theory perspective

“…In other regions of China, there had already been great success in developing e‐commerce in rural areas, which contributed to addressing a variety of societal issues including poverty alleviation (Cui et al, ; Leong et al, ). These regions, however, are usually located in the east coast of China, where the infrastructure is better and local residents usually have a tradition of engaging in entrepreneurial or at least market exchange activities.…”

“…Among many ICT‐based solutions, developing rural e‐commerce ecosystems is recognized by both practice and academia as particularly promising in poverty alleviation (Cui et al, ; Jha et al, ; Leong et al, ). A business ecosystem in general refers to a community of interdependent organizations that cooperate with each other and coevolve their roles and capabilities, to accomplish common business objectives such as innovation or customer services (McIntyre & Srinivasan, ; Moore, , ).…”

“…However, establishing rural e‐commerce ecosystems is a non‐trivial task. It requires the orchestration of a vast variety of resources and coordination of many parties with diverse interests (Cui et al, ; Leong et al, ). Two general approaches have been discussed in the literature (Leong et al, ).…”

Developing community capability for e‐commerce development in rural China: A resource orchestration perspective

“…Leveraging, which includes mobilizing, coordinating, and deploying, aims to make use of capabilities to create value. Despite the rapid development of the resource orchestration perspective, the relevant research is still in its infancy and is dispersed across the different fields of entrepreneurship (Baert et al, ; Chao, Coombs, Qian, & Sirmon, ; Wales, Patel, Parida, & Kreiser, ; Wang, Liang, Zhong, Xue, & Xiao, ), innovation (Carnes, Chirico, Hitt, Dong, & Pisano, ), supply chain management (Gong, Jia, Brown, & Koh, ; Hitt, Xu, & Carnes, ; Ketchen, Wowak, & Craighead, ), and IS (Cui et al, ; Cui & Pan, ; Du, Cui, & Su, ; Liu, Wei, Ke, Wei, & Hua, ; Wang et al, ; Zhou, Zhang, Chen, & Han, ). Such studies focus on either investigating the role of resource orchestration in achieving an outcome or revealing the process of resource orchestration.…”

“…This is meaningful for the study of e‐commerce in developing countries where resources are less available. Moreover, capability development is one of the most important outcomes of resource orchestration (Sirmon et al, ), and this perspective is suitable for examining process questions, eg, the capability development process (Baert, Meuleman, Debruyne, & Wright, ; Cui et al, ; Cui & Pan, ). Therefore, in this paper, we ask, “How is community capability for e‐commerce development in the rural regions of developing countries developed through resource orchestration?”…”