Exploring Leadership in E-Commerce Adoption in Australian SMEs

This chapter presents the results of a study investigating leadership and leadership styles in e-commerce adoption in small and medium size enterprises in Australia. The results show that top management and CEO’ leadership have a key role in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in developing a vision for e-commerce adoption and that the dominant leadership style is directive with some signs of consultative. Furthermore the study shows that e-commerce adoption is becoming a strategic process and in this process top management is taking into consideration both the organizational knowledge and the knowledge of external consultants.