Service Sector Multinational Network Research

As the agglutinant of other industries, service sector is growing rapidly in the overall national economy of each country, entering the international market in the face of globalization, and occupies a prominent share in the entire multinational corporations system; Similarly, in the new challenges of the world political and economic globalization, thus complex and diverse business environment, as well as the driven of information technology and regional economic integration, transnational corporations have set up the global network system gathering global integration and regional response, in which its network embeddedness directly determines the overall success of transnational corporations' operation. Therefore, regard the services MNCs as the study object and the network of MNCs as the study content, this research is vividly portrayed in these dual practice contexts.To the theoretically context, after literature review from five aspects, including researches of the historical evolution of services MNCs theory, transnational organizations, business networks, MNCs networks and the relative research of service MNCs' network nodes, the paper finds that the existing literature on services MNCs is inadequate, on MNCs networks is relatively monotonous and superficial, and all these have not discussed the relations between network nodes and network linkages as well as network embeddedness, thus this research on the embeddedness of services MNCs' overseas affiliates gets the theory footing. Therefore, this article which is based on the services MNCs' overseas affiliates, analyzing the issues of their characteristics and network control, and the impetus of network nodes extension, will be subject to a "three networks embeddedness", providing a realistic guidance for the network formation and embeddedness of services MNCs.In this reality and theory premise, this study, at first, defines the basic elements of . MNCs network and its embeddedness, making the network embeddedness transcend "point" (overseas affiliates) and "line" (network linkages) and present at a posture of "body" (network structure), meanwhile analyze the three patterns of network, and anatomize the network 3D including "what it is", "what it has" and "how about it".In the framework of network embeddedness transcending but not disengagingnetwork nodes, the next paper is divided into two parts-network nodes and network embeddedness- to explore service MNCs overseas affiliates. Analysis of network nodes, on the one hand, includes the characteristics of transnational corporations and the specificity of services MNCs' network control (at the aspect of entry model), which is based on the excavation of its unique nature from services, service corporations as well as services MNCs; On the other hand, this part analyzes the extension impetus of network nodes, combining with OLI advantages and external driven forces, to identify four kinds of strategy motivations for overseas expansion in which market-seeking one is dominated, and noted its "globalization" strategic orientation.Based on the discussion of network nodes, this dissertation will focus on the analysis of the network embeddedness of services MNCs' overseas affiliates. From the metaphor dimension of network, the research built the "ternary network embeddedness" model of services MNCs' overseas affiliates, through putting the "informal network embeddedness" into the "dual network embeddedness", which is formed from the internal integration network of MNCs advanced by Bartlett & Ghoshal (1989) and the MNCs and the external differentiated network represented by Porter (1990), Andersson et al. (2002). Moreover, from the analytical tools dimension of network, the paper outlines a six-dimensional evaluation system for the model. Therefore, it builds a influence factor model for the "ternary network embeddedness" of services MNCs' overseas affiliates, which conditions the contents of MNCs' overseas affiliates such as characteristics of service and multination corporation theory, coupling by the relationship between network notes and network embeddedness, and results in the ternary network embeddedness and its evaluation system. This model is tested by empirical analysis which acquires data through questionnaires and with the help of SPSS13.0 statistical software, furthermore, is used to compare the MNCs network embeddedness between services and manufacturing sectors, and the specific industries among service sectors.Finally, this research arrivs at the empirical findings and conclusions of this study, it is inevitable that there are limitations for the future exploration, and puts forth some revelations to the network construction of China's services MNCs .The main academic innovations are:1. The author builds the value chain for service corporations based on that of manufacturing ones, and identifies their reasonable correspondent relations between the activities in the value chain and the four strategic motives of services MNCs. Namely, marketing and services provision to the market-seeking motive, production and external logistics to the efficiency one, production and internal logistics to resource one, strategic assets can be found in any activities.2. Bringing the "informal network embeddedness" into the dual network embeddedness including internal and external network one, the author build a "ternary network embeddedness" of services MNCs' overseas affiliates, and a six-dimensional evaluation system for the model which includes the breadth, strength, stability, synergy of network embeddedness and the status in the network of nodes, as well as the network development.3. Moderated by the entry model and strategies motivation of overseas affiliates, these influence factors, from service characteristics and the OLI advantages of MNCs' overseas extension, influences the ternary network embeddedness of services MNCs' overseas affiliates which is evaluated by the six-dimensional system, all these can be embodied in a influence factor model for the network embeddedness of services MNCs' overseas affiliates. In addition, the author gets some unexpected findings such as the heterogeneity nature of service may be a moderate factor in the model.