Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Corporate Culture On Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is a key issue for firms forever. Coporate culuture benefits competitive advantage largely since it plays important roles in comporate management. Studies show that coporate culture and competitive advantage are closely connected with each other, however, the influence mechanism of coproate culture on competitive advantage is still not clear.This paper, roots in the characteristics of the Chinese culture, aims to answer the question about the relationships between corporate culture and competitive advantage. After a critical literature review of the related studies, the thesis constructs the research framework of "Coporate culture deminsions - Learning Capability, Innovation Capability - Competitive advantage". In relation to the core concept of the influence mechanism of corporate culture on competitive advantage, the paper carries on a research of four stages.Firstly, by reviewing and settling the related studies, a research frame of corporate culture is built.There are two angles in the studies of corporate culture—cultural content and cultural performances. According to the two kinds of manifestations, this research sets the corporate culture studies matrix. Based on this matrix, the line existing research is divided as four types: strong culture theory, adapted theory, core value theory and culuture characteristic theory. Secondly, with the Chinese culture background, referring to Schein's model of the basic hypotheses of coporate culture, this paper develops a system of Chinese corporate culture scale, which contains five dimensions of coprrate culture. The reliability of the scale is proved through questionnaires conducted by the author. Thirdly, according to positioning theory, resource based theory and capability based theory, the paper idscusses the origin of competitive advantages. It is recognized that coporate culture as a kind of invisible assest, can not bring competitive advantages directly. It must connect with competitive advantage by organizational capblilites. Learning capblitiy and innovation capability are found out as the two key capabilities both affected by coporate culture and competitive advantage. Therefore, the two capabilities are applied to the model of influence mechanism of coporate culture on competitive advantage. Fourthly, the research model is proved by quantatitive studies. Conclusions reached are that dimensions of experience orientation, internal harmony orientation, environment orientation and sustainable development orientation affect learning capability, and that dimensions of environment orientation, employee effiicency orientation and sustainable development orientation affect innovation capability.The contributions of this paper lie in some aspects as following: (1) Established the analyzing matrix of coporate culture studies; (2) Developed a Chinese coporate culture scale and are proved reliable; (3) Founded the research model of "Coporate culture deminsions - Learning Capability, Innovation Capability - Competitive advantage", which supports to firms' management practice with theoretical works.