The Research On Stratigic Alliances Of Corporations And NPOs: Collaborative Networks And Corporations' Competitive Advantage

In the long process of studying competitive advantages, researchers mainly seek the source of it from corporations'market behaviors and their market environment, and to a large degree neglected the question of acquisition of competitive advantages from corporations'commercial social behaviors. In recent years, as a subject of social studies, Non-profit Organizations (NPOs) are developing rapidly and becoming an important economic factors. The coordinated development of corporations and NPOs will be inevitable.This dissertation has probed into the alliance of corporations and NPOs, and discovered that the cooperation of these two could be an effective way to acquisite competitive advantages. The collaborative network is the starting point of this analysis, and its characteristic is studied qualitatively and quantitatively. On the basis of such analysis, a conceptual model of corporate competitive advantages based on different collaborative networks is established through the elaboration of the relationship of collaborative network's characteristic, inter-organizational study ability, the acquisition of resource and corporate competitive advantages. The mechanism of between the characteristic of collaborative network and corporate competitive advantages is also analyzed.In the empirical part of this paper, the author first conducted a survey on the corporations which has cooperated with NPOs. The conceptual model is revised and set up through the statistical analysis and the examination of structural equations. The mechanism between the collaborative network and corporate competitive advantage, and the various influences of collaborative networks'different characteristics on corporate competitive advantage is differentiated, which has provided some theoretical guidance for the construction of collaborative network between corporations and NPOs.The conclusions are as follows:1) The knowledge spillover and resource transfer, which may happen in the cooperation between corporations and NPOs. is selective and uneven; Corporations do not share the resource and knowledge in the collaborative network, and they are influenced by the differences of the network; 2) the ability of inter-organizational learning and resource acquisition is the key to corporate competitive advanges. Compared with other corporations, the corporations in collaborative networks are more dependent on the networks to gain certain knowledge and resource such as public relations and legitimacy.3) Different network structures and characteristics have different influences on corporate competitive advantage.Viewing from the perspective of network structural characteristic, the empirical research shows that proximity to the center of the collaborative network and big network size is favorable for the acquisition of competitive advantage, in which the former one is more influential than the latter one in terms of corporate competitive advantage. The proximity to the network center exerts influence on corporate competitive advantage through its influence on corporations'tangible resource acquisition ability in cross-sector alliance. Viewing from the perspective of the internal relationships of the collaborative networks, the interactions, cooperation and the trustful relationship between the corporations and NPOs is favorable for the acquisition of corporate competitive advantage, in which the relationship intensity has the strongest influence compared with the other two factors, whereas relationship stability has the least influence.4) collaborative network structure and its characteristic has influence on corporate competitive advantage through its influence on inter-organizational learning and resource acquisition ability in the cross-sector alliance of corporations and NPOs.5) Corporate innovation ability has great significance for its competitive advantage. Only when the knowledge acquired in the cross-sector alliance is innovated, can the knowledge be transformed into corporate competitive advantage.In the framework of collaborative network, inter-organizational learning and resource acquisition between corporations and NPOs. and corporate competitive advantage, this research has achieved three tentative theoretical innovations:1) the collaborative network characteristic is described quantitatively; Different cross-sector alliances have different influences on corporate competitive advantage acquisition.2) the mechanism of corporate competitive advantage acquisition is revealed; this paper sets up an innovative framework of collaborative network, inter-organizational learning and resource acquisition between corporations and NPOs.3) This is the first empirical study to differentiate the different influence brought by different collaborative network on corporate competitive advantage.The limitations in this paper and future questions worth studying are listed at the end of this paper.