Enterprise Network Relational Transaction Governance Mechanisms And Impact Studies

In recent years, the thriving of network organizations in world economy has wined much attention in academic field. Consequently, the development of network theories has also been accelerated. According to the network theory, networks are institutional arrangement between markets and hierarchies, and the proper way to study the efficiency of transactions must be taken under the framework of firms-networks-hierarchies. The growing up of network theory is changing the landscape of traditional firm theories and industrial organization theories. Even now network as an institutional innovation has been widely accepted, and it is engendering gigantic shock in the practice, but unanimous agreement on its essential conceptions about what is happening in it and how it can be efficient are still not reached among the economists.Based on the analysis of the contract efficiency of a common transaction process, an academic dichotomy - markets and hierarchies - on transaction governance has formed in tradition. Correspondingly, it is assumed that there exist two types of transaction governance arrangements: the price mechanism and the authority mechanism. From the viewpoint of holism, we have explored the validity and relative consequences of the networks under the trichotomous framework of firms-networks-hierarchies. To achieve such goals, we took the inter-firm network relationship as the basic assumptive unit in our analyzing process, and integrated the time as a factor into the transaction cost approach. Furthermore, to anatomize the interaction of different elements of the relationships, we also import a concept from the sociology: embedded structure. As the kernel of networks, the embedded structure plays an important role in our research.The first section of this dissertation is literature review. We found out that there exist two branches in the network theories. Some literatures are in the scope of economics, and others in management science. In the view of transaction cost theories, networks were treated as one kind of governance arrangement, like markets and hierarchies. Correspondingly, within the scope of strategic management, networks can be seen as some tactics, it implies there is some balance between cooperation and competition in the networks. Except for its diversification, there has been a clearsynthetic trend in the development of network theories. Obviously, the focus of the academic works has gradually switched to the operation and governance mechanism of the networks. Enlightened by the previous works, this dissertation has concentrated on the analysis of the network arrangement process. The following three parts are the main work of this dissertation.(1) By analyzing the interaction process in the embedded structure, we suggested that the network arrangement is valid to govern the relational transactions.According to transaction cost approaches, the governance arrangements are depended upon the characters of transactions. In this dissertation, the relational transaction is described as customized transactions with stable supplies and uncertain demands. It is a continuous transaction with the characters of repeated games. With the interactions of different factors, relational transactions bring up the embedded structure, which forms the foundation of the orders in the networks. The embedded structure is comprised of two types of components: the real factors and the social-economic factors. In case a firm took part in the interaction in the networks, the above factors could build activity links, resources integrations, and actor bonds. Therefore, each partner may obtain partial control on the assets of others, and then some rights of residual control on these assets. This means some changes have taken place in the allocations of the rights of residual control in the relational transactions. Along with the operation of the relational contract, the network will match the power of relationship with the rights of residual control fairly well through the interactions in the embedded structure. Th...