Study On The Relationship Of Relational Embeddedness Of Subsidiary To Parent,Resource Acquisition And Subsidiary Entropreneurship

Subsidiary entrepreneurship is an important path to the reformation and development of large parent-subsidiary corporations. However, the related research development of subsidiary entrepreneurship is far behind the practice. Compared to the ordinary enterprises, the biggest characteristic of subsidiar-ies is its dual embeddedness. Subsidiaries are embedded in the local business network which is called external embeddedness and at the same time are embedded in the parent-subsidiary network which is called internal embeddedness. The embeddedness is the most important situation for subsidiary entrepreneurship. The parent company with a sense of superiority of its control in the internal network,holds a lot of quality resources, so it will have an important impact on subsidiary entrepreneurship. The research explores the relationships of the relational embeddedness of subsidiary to parent companies, resource acquition from parents and subsidiary entrepreneurship,which will help subsidiaries to improve the relationship between parents and subsidiaries, to acquire more entrepreneurial resources and ultimately contribute to enhance the overall competitiveness of enterprises.The basic logic of the model is the relational embeddedness of subsidiary to parent - resource acquisition from the parents - subsidiary entrepreneurship. Firstly, researches and theories on subsidiary network embeddedness, subsidiary entrepreneurship and resource acquisition were reviewed, theoretical significance and the inadequacy of current researches were disussed. Secondly, managerial attention and attention based view were introduced because they help to explain the "black box" of subsidiary entrepreneurship. The chapter for attention includes the introduction for managerial attention and attention based view, the necessity for the research, principles on attention resource allocation and its influence on subsidiary entrepreneurship. Combined with the literatures, the relational embeddedness is divided into three dimensions:trust from parents, tie strength and shared values. Subsidiary entrepreneurship is divided into moderate internal entrepreneurship and radical external entrepreneurship. Inspired by the attention based view, two kinds of resource are named:conventional resources and parent attention resources. Conventional resources include human resource, properties, technology, knowledge, market,and so on Parent attention resources refer to the supportive attention from parents to subsidiaries which is subjective, unique and scarce. According to the two dimensions of resources, two dimensions of subsidiary resource acquisition are named with parent attention resource acquisition and conventional resources acquisition. Based on the theoretical definitions, the relationships of the relational embeddedness,resource acquition from parents and the subsidiary entrepreneurship are analyzed, the research hypotheses are developed, and the theoretical model is formed which explains how the relational embeddedness influences subsidiary entrepreneurship mediated by the resource acquition.Following the empirical studies collectting large sample questionnaire surveys, three main conclusions were obtained.(1) The relational embeddedness promotes attention acquisition, but there are differences of the dimensions of conventional resources acquisition. With structural equation model to test the theoretical model, the path coefficient of the relational embeddedness and the dimensions of attention acquisition are significantly positive. But only trust from parents shows significant positive impact on conventional resource acquisition. Though shared values shows positive role to conventional resources, it’s not significant. Notably, tie strength can not help subsidiaries acquire resources, but may even hinder, although the negative effect is not significant.(2) Overally resource acquisition shows a positive effect on subsidiary entrepreneurship. Attention resource acquisition has a significant role in promoting subsidiary entrepreneurship behavior. And also conventional resource acquisition has a significant role in promoting of external entrepreneurial behavior but not internal entrepreneurship.(3) The attention resource acquisition can significantly promote the conventional resource acquisition, so entirely resource acquisition has multiple mediating effects on the relationships of relational embeddedness and entrepreneurial behavior of subsidiaries. Multiple mediation model means that both of attention resource acquisition and conventional resource acquisition are mediators at the same time, and they are connected for some reasons. The relational embeddedness shows positive influence to entrepreneurial behaviors of subsidiary with the multiple mediating effects of resource acquisition.Two hypotheses are derived from the multiple mediating effects and are tested,which are about the mediating effects of attention acquisition on the relational embeddedness and conventional resources and the mediating effects of conventional resource acquisition on the attention resource acquisition and subsidiary entrepreneurship behaviors.The main contributions of this dissertation are as follows:(1) The construction and validation of the theoretical model of the relationships of the relational embeddedness, resource acquition from parents and the subsidiary entrepreneurship. Compared the difference situations of network embeddedness between subsidiaries and ordinary enterprises, explained three dimensions of the relational embeddedness in the parent-subsidiary company, analyzed the mechanism of subsidiary entrepreneurial behaviors, developed the likert scales and colleted 270 useful samples, we draw some reasonable conclusions and have made some development on theories of corporate entrepreneurship, subsidiary embeddedness and parent-subsidiary relationships etc..(2)The importance of attention resources from parents. Parent attention is an access to resource acquisition, and resources is the premise of entrepreneurial behaviors.So the construct of " parent attention resource Attention" is confirmed to be helpful to conventional resources acquisition, and it makes the process of resource acquisition clear. It’s rational and innovative to develop attention based view in the traditional strategic management research.(3)The test of multiple mediating effects of resource acquisition. With more and more interdisciplinary connections and more and more complexity in research situation, more than one mediators will often be required to explain the effects of independent variables on the dependent variables better. Although there are improvements that should be made in the application and test of multiple mediating effects, structural equation model and Bootstrap method are adopted to test the modle which have been proved to be reasonable and make sense for method innovation.