In broad terms this book will help managers to harness the power of the Internet to enable them to identify, implement and deliver effective electronic commerce services which will help their organisations to compete more effectively.

Written to give an overview of contemporary electronic commerce (EC) management the book explains relevant issues of effective management of EC activities and highlights the areas of greatest potential application for the technology. Electronic commerce continues to evolve dramatically. This changing environment is addressed by focussing on the development of an electronic commerce enabled strategy that permits a firm to simultaneously achieve the scale, scope and efficiency that comes from being large and the flexibility, speed and responsiveness of being small.

The special challenges related to EC within and between organizations are highlighted and attention is given to the enabling technologies (client server architecture, the Internet) required to implement the EC infrastructure in the 21st century.

On a practical level the book is organized around a management audit of EC activity designed to show whether a company is making the most of the electronic commerce resource. Useful examples, tables and figures convey and illustrate key conceptual frameworks.