A Systematic Literature Review of Flexible E-Procurement Marketplace

During the Web era e-procurement has witnessed a steep rise in marketplace deployment; this has been followed by a substantial number of failures. A number of larger technology providers are now left to support both small and large businesses. Flexibility has been a key enabler in supporting network evolution across a varied number of domains. The aim of this study is to investigate flexibility around marketplace evolution, success and failure. In particular, explore the inter-relationships between architectural flexibility and the evolving Web and Internet. A systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out in order to uncover the changes that have taken place over the past fifteen years. A conceptual model is produced early in the research in order to provide contextual underpinning. We employed a manual search of 5 journals. Of the 22 relevant studies, one addressed research trends around e-procurement in pharmaceutical organizations. Three addressed eprocurement in financial organizations. A number of flexibility categories are uncovered by the SLR and then used as a means to support flexible e-procurement marketplace (EPM) design and adoption, recognising EPM evolution over the volatile study period. Flexibility categories are uncovered and comprise technical, organisational, environmental and strategic (TOES) concerns.