A Study Of Endogenous Factors Of The Efficient Boundary In Competitive Strategic Alliance

Competitive alliance formed by direct competitors is an emerging strategic mode, which is absorbing more and more attentions from researchers and enterprises. Through forming alliances with competitors by using partners'critical resources, firms managed to improve their strategic position and competency, as well as to impact and improve the industrial environment. For firms participate in competitive alliances, which mode or governance structure and how to choose other governance mechanism is the key factor to minimize risks and maximize incomes, for management of alliance between competitors are far more complex than other modes. Unfortunately, due to the short history, there are limited literatures on this topic. Therefore, formed by adding"efficiency"to"boundary", the concept of efficient boundary in alliance can be construed as portfolios of governance mechanisms which can safeguard risks and increase potential competitive advantages efficiently.Based on literature on studies of alliance cooperative effect and alliance governance, the concept of efficient boundary in alliance expand the research of firm's boundary and is a refinement of alliance governance studies, furthermore, it may help to bridge transaction cost economics and strategic management theories, and clarify the governance mechanism's working mechanizations and attributions in bilateral or network situation. To disuss the configuration of efficient boundary and its changing mechanism has significant value for theories and application.The research methods we will use include theoretical and concept model, regression model, structural equation model and moderation model. The purpose is to clarify the construct of efficient boundary, and explain factors such as transaction attributions, resource and competence attributions and option-like attributions which may have significant impact on efficient boundary.We make great efforts on the following three aspects. First, we make effort on theoretical research. Based on literatures and theoretical analysis, the theoretical and concept models about efficient boundary of competitive alliance are proposed. Second, based on the results of literature studies and theoretical analysis, empirical hypotheses are proposed. Then, we examine these hypotheses about efficient boundary and their determining factors and find out the pathes. Third, we managed to study the moderation variables, try to get the balance relationship between competition and cooperation in competitive alliance and make it clear that efficient boundary's changing mechanisms.The concept of efficient boundary in alliance is consisted by portfolios of governance mechanisms which can safeguard risks and increase potential competitive advantages efficiently, it reflect the actual cooperation level in bilateral and multilateral situation and we will use alliance's governance structure and contractual complexity to be the constructs of it. Based on the above work, we carry out the analysis and get the following results.The most obvious dimension of efficient boundary in alliance is governance structure. It include several modes such as unilateral or bilateral contractual mode, unilateral or bilateral equity mode and equity joint venture. The governance structure can be construed as control mechanisms to manage activities and by choosing the most appropriate modes, the partner can manage and control the cooperation level.The other dimension of efficient boundary in this research is contractual complexity. Contractual complexity can restrict vertical cooperation scope in alliance's daily activities such as purchase, R&D, manufacture and marketing, it can even limit the horizontal scope to manage cooperation level in competitive firms'relationship. Horizontal scope is an important index to reflect the level of cooperation, and the most obvious construct is the the modularity level during technological transaction. Horizontal scope reflects efforts contribute to alliance in terms of resource, knowledge sharing, and modularity is a specific index of horizontal scope. When modularity level of cooperation is very low, its resource and knowledge sharing is actually in a high level, vice versa.By integrating above two dimensions, we can use cooperation boundary (governance structure) and cooperation scale (contractual complexity) to define efficient boundary. It described the portfolios of mechanism in whole perspective, reflects the actual cooperation level and even dynamics in cooperation level choices.In the aspect of empirial research, we find out that the efficient boundary of competitive alliance is significantly impacted by both internal resources and external environment, more specifically, that is transaction attributions, resource and competence attributions and option-like attributions. In the aspect of influence path, key factors such as opportunistic threaten and potential competitive advantages may have some mediation effect to efficient boundary, and SEM analysis help to verify it. Further more, the moderating roles of alliance scope control and technological modularity are very significant and make it sense that changing mechanism of efficient boundary. The findings of this research make certain contributions to the improvement of research system of competitive alliance, and provide some theoretical reference for the future studies in this area. Further more, by offering reference and guidance about how to reap competitive advantages through co-opetition, the results we get in this paper are beneficial for the spreading of co-opetition strategy in business.