Information sharing and business systems leveraging in supply chains: An empirical investigation of one web-based application InduShobha Chengalur-Smith a, *, Peter Duchessi a,1 , J. Ramon Gil-Garcia b,2 a School of Business, University at Albany, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222, USA b Centro de Investigacio ´n y Docencia Econo ´micas, Carretera Me ´xico-Toluca No. 3655, Col. Lomas de Santa Fe, Me ´xico, D.F. 01210, Mexico 1. Introduction As use of the Internet and the Web increases in sophistication, companies are deploying Web-based supply chain applications to enhance their operations, improve business performance, reduce inventory costs, etc. Web-based electronic data interchange, supply chain applications, and private and public exchanges are examples of such systems. Wal-Mart, Dell, and Procter & Gamble are just a few companies with Web-based supply chain applications that state that they have improved their planning, forecasting, and replenishment processes [12]. Generally, the improvements are predicated on sharing information and leveraging information systems, thereby broadening information capabilities and increasing the degree of digitization of previously manual business activities. Researchers have examined information sharing and systems integration in supply chains from several perspectives, including information sharing requirements [16], hardware and software integration [17], transaction costs [10], and organizational readiness. For them, information sharing and systems integration are either an end in themselves, or they serve as antecedents to other improvements that enhance business performance, includ- ing increased sales, improved business processes, and reduced supply chain costs [14]. Some supply chain applications, collect and store data about all the supply chain participants and their activities in a centralized database and make it readily available to the participants through a Web browser. This imparts integrative qualities and consequently improves mutual knowledge, including instant sharing of demand, inventory, and shipping information. Because data about supply chain participants and their activities are centralized and readily available through these integrative applications, companies are less likely to experience problems in integrating their systems in order to transfer and share data throughout the supply chain. There has been little empirical research on Web-based supply chain applications with such integrative qualities and their associated business benefits. For these supply chain applications, we hypothesized that two information capabilities, information sharing and business systems leveraging, with relational concur- rence acting as an antecedent to them, are essential in order to attain important business benefits. In our model, information sharing is primarily the degree to which supply chain participants share supply chain information via the Web-based supply chain application; business systems leveraging is the degree to which companies combine their business systems, including the supply chain, and use them to execute orders; and relational concurrence is the degree of shared business interests. Companies that combine – or conjoin – business systems, either partially or totally, broaden Information & Management 49 (2012) 58–67 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 1 October 2008 Received in revised form 1 April 2011 Accepted 1 December 2011 Available online 16 December 2011 Keywords: Web-based supply chain applications Supply chains Resource based view of the firm Information sharing Business systems leveraging Relational concurrence Business benefits A B S T R A C T Web-based supply chain applications promise to provide information sharing capabilities that will enhance the participating organizations’ information capabilities and business benefits. We performed an empirical study of a sophisticated Web-based supply chain application to determine the effect of such information sharing and business systems leveraging on business benefits. We also examined the importance of relational concurrence (i.e., shared business interests among supply chain partners), as an antecedent to both information sharing and business systems leveraging. Our work showed that both information sharing and business system leveraging provided important business benefits and that relational concurrence was only marginally related to information sharing and not at all related to business systems leveraging, limiting the significance attributed to this factor in prior research on inter- organizational systems. Published by Elsevier B.V. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 518 442 4028; fax: +1 518 442 4975. E-mail addresses: shobha@albany.edu (I. Chengalur-Smith), PDuchessi@uamail.albany.edu (P. Duchessi), joseramon.gil@cide.edu (J.R. Gil-Garcia). 1 Tel.: +1 518 442 4945. 2 Tel.: +52 55 5727 9800. Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Information & Management jo u rn al h om ep ag e: ww w.els evier.c o m/lo c ate/im 0378-7206/$ – see front matter . Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.im.2011.12.001