Articles about some aspect of electronic commerce appear in publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week and US News everyday. There is a reason for such extensive coverage by the press. Firms are spending billions of dollars on information technology to create the infrastructure needed to compete in a digital economy. As the process of "getting wired" continues, the need to understand how this new environment is and will affect enterprises and individuals increases. We are rapidly discovering that business practices that have evolved over hundreds of years no longer work. Every aspect of a business is in the process of being transformed; firms are being forced to adapt or fail.

The Internet, in general, and the World Wide Web, in particular, have had a dramatic impact on how individuals and organizations exchange goods and services. The Internet has given rise to new organizational forms (e.g., virtual organizations) and markets which feature electronic transaction models in new categories of goods and services. These developments have profound implications for society and raise several legal and policy issues that are yet largely unresolved (e.g., copyright, taxation, etc.). The convergence of computing and communications technologies is having a dramatic impact on such organizational processes as new product development, resource acquisition, order fulfillment and customer service.