Pressuring trading partners to adopt a business-to-business connectivity platform - Stick or carrot?

The paper examines the impact of external pressure in the act of onboarding trading partners to business-to-business (B2B) connectivity platforms. Articulating different forms of external pressure (enticement and enforcement) and drawing on a survey of 121 organizations, it examines the effect of three enticement factors and three enforcement factors on firms' decision to adopt a B2B connectivity platform. In general, enforcement measures (“sticks”) were found to be more effective than enticement (“carrots”). Two exceptions are presented: enticement works better than enforcement in persuading organizations with high invoicing intensity or heavy use of cloud technologies. The authors discuss the overall finding and theorize in light of the empirical study's context, wherein the platform generates asymmetric benefits to the trading partners (i.e., an organization receiving the transaction document delivered through the B2B connectivity platform harnesses most of the benefits). The findings' implications for research and practice are considered.