استفاده از اتوماتای ​​سلولی برای شبیه سازی پذیرش تجارت الکترونیک در سازمان های کوچک

The focus of the research is to study the dynamics of electronic commerce propagation caused by organisational characteristics in small organisations. A model of opinion dynamics and verbalisation process for studying the receptivity of electronic commerce in small organisations in Slovenia is proposed. The methodology is based on cellular automata approach, diffusion theory, small organisations characteristics and studies on factors affecting electronic commerce introduction and usage in small organisations. The decision of an organisation whether to adopt electronic commerce or not is based on its attitude towards electronic commerce and impressions gathered from interactions with other organisations. Different characteristics of organisations were defined according to the data gathered by interviews and a survey. Several types of electronic commerce diffusion dynamics are evident from the data gathered. The most likely scenario of electronic commerce diffusion among small organizations in Slovenia predicts a decrease in organizations that are less mature in e-commerce and the increase in more mature organizations by 6–8% by the end of year 2006.

The Internet has evolved from a non-commercial research tool into an interactive broadcast medium with unparalleled reach and interactivity. It is still a subject of major interest, primarily because of its potential for global interconnectivity. This interest has led to large investments to expand its capacity and capabilities that caused tremendous growth in electronic commerce. The concept of exchanging data with business partners lead to the development of Inter-organisational systems [1], [2]. In this context a growing body of literature suggests that Internet technologies play significant role in radically expanding the volume and scale of a global electronic commerce (e.g. Ref. [3]). Consider a group of interconnecting organisations — business partners spread all over the globe. They use traditional trading methods, each having a more or less similar opinions about their trading. But in general opinions may be influenced by other organisations and attitudes may change accordingly. An organisation's attitude influences its business strategy. Let's consider that in a group of trading partners there might be an organisation with a “be first” strategy and an innovation appears, e.g. electronic commerce. The organisation is influenced by new possibilities and their attitude changes. In a group of trading partners this causes a group-wide attitude and opinion formation process. Suddenly there are plenty of possibilities for a change — the spreading of the new way of trading. The propagation of the new way of trading depends on the patterns that appear during the propagation process [4] and [5]. There is no doubt that electronic commerce has made its way into businesses, but despite the extraordinary amount of popular press coverage of the electronic commerce revolution, many organisations have not travelled far down the path of electronic commerce [2]. How many organisations really use the Internet to do business? How do they use it? And how are they planning to use it? Where do the small organisations fit in the big picture? Uncertainty prevails as soon as we get to the evaluation of the dimension of electronic commerce, its growth rate and its role in the economic growth and development. We have used the network analysis approach in order to develop a model of electronic commerce diffusion. Our model implements the basic concept of opinion dynamics as proposed by Ref. [6] and builds upon the core results of the research of factors that influence electronic commerce adoption among small organisations conducted by Refs. [7] and [8]. The methodology is based on the cellular automata approach, diffusion theory, characteristics of small organisations and studies on factors affecting electronic commerce introduction and usage in small organisations. Our model simulates the global consequences of local interactions between the members of observed population. The purpose of this research was to investigate the decision process in small organisations considering the adoption and use of electronic commerce and to uncover the factors that influence this process. At the same time we sought to find out which small organisations are most likely to implement electronic commerce. Information about electronic commerce propagation is important on the national level to see competitive progress of a small economy through information technology growth. Competitive growth is one of the major mechanisms in economic and social development in Slovenia and in Slovenia's progress towards the European Union's contemporary directions on development. In this research we have treated the electronic commerce as an innovation phenomenon that propagates through a group of companies [9]. Since there is no commonly agreed upon definition of electronic commerce and the contemporary definitions seem to vary with time, we defined electronic commerce as the state of “conducting business on-line”. This includes buying and selling products with digital cash and Electronic Data Interchange [10] by using company-based e-mail communication and Internet access.

A belief often expressed in scientific and trade literature is that the role of electronic commerce in the strategy of organisations is gaining importance; therefore mastering the process of diffusion of electronic commerce is becoming a very important part of strategic planning in the information society. This article presents a model and several analyses of its behaviour that capture the concepts of opinion dynamic and verbalisation process from the diffusion theory. Composition of this theory and cellular automata approach in the simulation of complex dynamics gives new dimensions in understanding of dynamic organisational systems and in investigations of electronic commerce diffusion. Efforts in this study were focused on five objectives. The first objective was accomplished by literature research on social dynamics. We found fundamental similarities between social science and organisational science: organisations are treated as dynamic agents and they behave according to their own characteristics. These findings were incorporated to model opinion dynamics and verbalisation process as the process of electronic commerce diffusion among organisations. Changes and communications viewed through the eyes of one individual/organisation may be simple, but viewed globally, a large number of interacting individuals generate aggregate behaviour that could be complex and hard to predict. To model this behaviour from micro-representations at the macro level we used cellular automata. To accomplish the second objective, a model similar to the models of continuous opinion dynamics was proposed. The model was fitted with the results of analysis of the survey, interviews, data of RIS [31] and statistical data [39]. With the modelling effort we sought to identify the optimal scenario that fits electronic commerce diffusion as recorded by our survey at two different time points. The scenarios differ in type of business, intensity of doing business with business partners, managerial enthusiasm and support and business partner's electronic commerce maturity. They also differ in the relation between internal and external influences, in threshold of decision, in the function of interruption, in the function of interpretation of message and in the function of mutual influence between organisations. With the combination of different parameters and functions the verbalisation process was altered. The results that fit best the changes recorded by the survey at two different time points show that the development of electronic commerce in an average organisation is influenced by both internal and external factors and the internal factors are still predominant. Contrary to the study [7] which found external pressure as the major reason why small organisations adopt electronic commerce, this research found that the support of managers has the strongest impact on electronic commerce. The difference between results of the study [7] and our results may originate from the different size of the sample of organisations included in interviews. Our research showed that the perceived benefits are much more important than external pressure. Importance of internal factors (perceived benefits and organisational readiness) rises with maturity of electronic commerce. Investigations in this research showed that innovative organisations are influenced only by internal factors (external influence was found to be extremely small compared to the internal influences). The answer to the third objective (to examine the factors that influence the formation of company attitude) can be found with an examination of the matrix of different parameters and the results presented above. The fourth and fifth objectives were to forecast the electronic commerce diffusion among small organisations and to study the environment distribution of electronic commerce among small organisations. In this paper we forecast the development of electronic commerce maturity until the year 2005 according to the optimal scenario of electronic commerce diffusion. The results indicate that most of small organisations in Slovenia will reach second and third stage of electronic commerce maturity. Slight differences in share of each level of electronic commerce maturity between our results and Ref. [38] may originate in different types of surveys, our investigated exclusively electronic commerce maturity while Ref. [38] measured information society indicators. For precise comparison of simulated data with today's state of electronic commerce maturity repetition of the survey on electronic commerce maturity would be needed. In spite of slight differences in results both studies showed that organisations will be mostly able to find important business information on the Internet, buy goods electronically, have a simple Web page presentation and utilize electronic banking. Density of distribution of small organisations and speed of change in electronic commerce is greater in the economy centres of Slovenia. Some of our results can be explained by this as the managers of these organisations are probably better and more quickly informed about the improvements on organisation, technology and economy than their rural counterparts. Although the analyses in this article investigate the impact of most important factors, the model could be also used to study other complex dynamic patterns e.g. critical mass, interference of different factors, certainty of electronic maturity change and reaching consensus between organisations.