Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a method of identifying unique items using radio waves that communicate between RFID tags and readers without line‑of‑sight readability. Application areas include person identification, logistics, pharmaceutical, access control, security guard monitoring and asset management. One of the areas where RFID promises excellent potential is in the retail industry for the tracking of goods and products throughout the supply chain. There are concerns around numerous RFID adoption barriers. Decision makers in the South African retail sector seem to be adopting a wait‑and‑see approach. In an attempt to identify and explore these barriers, a literature review was conducted identifying 29 unique barriers to RFID adoption. A survey instrument, informed by these barriers, was constructed and administered to members of the retail sector in South Africa. The research reveals that the South African retail sector is aware of the benefits in adopting RFID technology, however, they have identified numerous adoption barriers that will need mitigation before they will commit to adopting RFID. The research confirms six main categories with several adoption barriers in each, needing to be addressed. The main categories include, RFID skills shortage, a lack of standardization, high costs of RFID devices, the difficulty of integrating with current legacy systems and a lack of familiarity with RFID systems.

In the today's rapidly changing competitive business environment, only flexible and dynamically developing companies are able to meet competition, companies that have managed to reduce costs and improve business efficiency through the introduction of adva

Abstract: The ability of a company to either adapt to the changes in the business environment or to influence the environment, for example by innovations, determines its success in gaining competitive advantage or even survival in the contemporary busines s environment. Both scholars and practitioners are constantly devising ways to survive the environmental pressures, such as, information overload, technological advances and obsolescence and globalization. This research proposes strategic agility comprise d of strategic sensitivity, strategic response and collective capabilities as one such business virtue required. One such competitive and complex industry is Telecommunication industry and this study makes use of a company in that industry to investigate strategic agility and information systems (IS) role in promoting strategic agility. In addition, the supply chain setting is considered because of its significance in the industry as one of the competitive factors. The research revealed different point s of view for the role of IS from business and information technology (IT) managers. The value of strategic agility is appreciated by both sets of managers. However, the managers have different views on the value of IS in promoting the strategic agility dimensions, for instance, most business managers highlighted that IS is of no strategic value and one even claimed it is the worst performing function. But IS managers noted that, IS, for instance, business intelligence and enterprise resource planning s ystems could be utilized hand‑in‑hand to support strategic agility. Moreover, this study make use of dynamic capabilities view in drawing both strategic agility dimensions and IS input. This study contributes to the ever required knowledge on how busines s could make use of IS and adapt organizational features to the environment requirements in order to survive the competition.

This study investigates the impact of key antecedents from technology‑organization‑environment contexts on developing e‑supply chain coordination capability in the small‑to‑medium enterprise (SME) context. Using data from 271 SMEs in Australia, we find that e‑supply chain coordination is driven by IT infrastructure, business partnerships, and customer power. In addition, SMEs with strong e‑supply chain coordination capability can achieve outstanding business performance. This study provides an empirical evidence to understand the relationships between these antecedents, e‑supply chain coordination capability, and SME performance. These findings suggest that e‑business practice is one of key factors that contribute to SME success. SME managers should understand how to utilize internal and external resources to develop e‑business competences in order to achieve business goals.