Toward a unified view of electronic commerce, electronic business, and collaborative commerce: a knowledge management approach

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become a major factor in determining the future survival or success of organizations. The definitions of e-commerce are many and diverse. In addition to these, there are varied notions of electronic business (e-business) and collaborative commerce (c-commerce). Here, we structure the existing five-fold e-commerce taxonomy to accommodate various e-business and c-commerce perspectives as well. From this, we synthesize an integrated over-arching definition of e-business. However, the result has a limitation. To overcome it, we advance a knowledge-management view that explicitly recognizes e-business as being based on e-knowledge: processes and technologies for managing knowledge. We contend that the knowledge-oriented perspective of e-commerce/c-commerce/e-business is beneficial in furnishing a common, organized, and unified foundation for understanding and managing electronic organizations in the knowledge e-conomy.