| This dissertation used for reference the research achievements of the new institution economics, the theories in business administration, history of legal institutions and history of enterprise evolution and put forward a succinct model based on the analysis of the history enterprise development and evolution. The author regarded the development and evolution of enterprises as the function of market, technology and institution, and considered the evolution and development of enterprises as a dynamic process during which the external environment and enterprises interact with each other and so do the various internal factors of enterprises. The comprehensive action of market, technology and institution decides the sizes of and balanced relationship among enterprises'productive profits, internal transaction costs and market's transaction costs. The change of any of the three factors will break the established balance and consequently impels the form of enterprises to change. On the basis of regular research, the author conducted empirical study about the enterprise forms of four phases, namely, classical enterprises, modern enterprises, contemporary enterprises, and post-contemporary enterprises. The author demonstrated the rules of enterprise evolution as put forward in the model through historical induction. In this dissertation, the author: Established a model for the development and evolution of enterprises Discussed the two pairs of contradiction decisive for the evolution of enterprises Analyzed the three variables affecting the evolution of enterprises Empirically studied the four phases of enterprise evolution Put forward five rules of enterprise evolutionFinally, the author analyzed, using the model, the history of General Motors, from Durant's pioneering work to the firm's rise and fall, hence once again proving the phases and rules of enterprise growth. Based on these rules, the author made exploration and proposed recommendations that might be useful for the current enterprise growth and governmental decision-making in China.1. Contents of the DissertationThis dissertation is divided into nine chapters.Chapter I IntroductionIn this chapter, the author put forward the causes for the research on evolution of enterprises and introduced three deficiencies in the previous studies. First, these studies did not integrate the technical perspective with the institutional perspective. Second, these studies on the evolution of enterprises did not pay due attention to the influence of the particular historical background. Third, these studies approached the evolution of enterprises at a classically methodological level, yet at the same time without a comprehensive scrutiny of the origin, history and prospect of enterprises. In the dissertation, the author took the view that the formation and development of enterprises were a result of the development of the markets, technical evolution, and institutional evolution. Therefore, the purpose and approaches of this dissertation are to analyze the history of enterprise evolution from two-level interactions. One is an external interaction—the interaction between enterprises and external environment. The other is an internal interaction—the interaction between technology and institution. In this chapter, the author also introduced the terminologies used through the whole dissertation and the research methods employed. In the end, the author observed the shortcomings in the dissertation.Chapter II Theoretical FrameworkIn this chapter, the author mainly reviewed the previous studies from technology and institution perspectives. The review aimed to provide a theoretical framework for the whole dissertation. Taking aim at the evolution of enterprises, the author comprehensively studied the theories of the origin, nature and evolution of enterprises, involving classical economics, neoclassical economics, Marxist political economics, neo-institutional economics, North's economic history, Chandler's industrial history, and the theories in business administration. On these bases, the author answered the questions of"what are enterprises?","why do enterprises exist?", and"how do enterprises evolve?".Chapter IIIIt is the core of the dissertation. In this chapter, the author established a model of the evolution of enterprises. First, the author elaborated the nature of enterprises and their necessary components and suggested a three-phase model of technical evolution, including"simple cooperation and specialized cooperation","machinery cooperation and flow line cooperation", and"intellectualized machinery cooperation". Accordingly, the author adopted four dimensions:"property institution","liability institution","legal entity institution", and"internal management institution"in analyzing the forms of enterprise institution. Additionally, the author discussed the three variables affecting the evolution of enterprises—market, technology and institution.On this basis, the author explained the basic component relationships within the model of enterprise evolution and concluded five rules:(1) Market, technology and institution together decide the evolution of enterprises. Such a mechanism reflects the relationship between productive profits and transaction costs under certain market capacity.(2) The evolution of enterprise forms is adapted to the course of economic development and is shown as the transformation from classical enterprises to modern enterprises, then to contemporary enterprises, and finally to post-contemporary enterprises.(3) The history of enterprise development and evolution is a course of conflict and adjustment among multi-interests.(4) The dominant form of enterprises co-existed with other forms.(5) The evolution of enterprises reflected the combination of objective inevitability and subjective initiative.Chapter IVThis is an empirical study of the evolution of classical enterprises. The author took the view that enterprises originated during the transitional period to market economy from natural economy. In the 11th and 12th century, due to the increase of population, lots of lands were reclaimed. Great economic diversity accelerated the commercial and urban development. The economic specialization accordingly became thriving. With the further development of commerce, enterprises emerged as a new and effective model and step by step took the place of family and manor in production. According to economic historiography, classical enterprises were well developed between the 11th and the early 14th centuries. These enterprises then kept declining due to the black plague and war until the recovery in the 16th century.In this chapter, the author analyzed the historical and cultural background of classical enterprises, including such factors as population, agriculture, transportation and urbanization. In the mean time, the author acknowledged the influence of the manorial institution, the law of market economy, the guild system, monetary and credit systems, marketplaces, and heritage system, and gave a picture of the technological evolution in the Medieval. The author divided the evolution of classical enterprises into four phases: domestic system, guild, putting-out system, and early company, and observed the reasons for the evolution. In the end, the author elaborated from technological and institutional perspectives the characteristics of classical enterprises as two points: first, they did not have, or had very few, scale profits technologically; second, they were more like private contract than independent entities institutionally. Chapter VIn chapter V, the author made an empirical study of modern enterprises. This is the second period in the evolution of enterprises. Modern enterprises were the enterprises transiting from centralized workshops to factory system. They emerged from the late 16th century to the middle 19th. Against the background of Columbus's discovery, industrial revolution, and capitalist democratic revolution, modern enterprises emerged to satisfy the requirements of a larger scale market and to provide higher productivity, and finally took the place of classical enterprises. Modern enterprises carried out a system of centralized manufacturing, centralized dynamic and machinery cooperation in the technological perspective and established a system of independent corporate entity, limited liabilities, and specialized management in the institutional perspective. In this chapter, the author introduced such three forms of modern enterprise as centralized workshop, factory and company.Chapter VIThis chapter is an empirical study of contemporary enterprises. This type of enterprises emerged from 1840s. American Railway Corporation became the first contemporary enterprises after thorough reform. Contemporary enterprises made use of large-scale productive technology, established the contemporary enterprise institution and corporate governance institution, and developed the most effective scale economy. This analysis reflected the understanding of the term modernity and covered the nature of contemporary enterprises, their characteristics and their evolution.The author thought that the development of contemporary enterprises was a result of rapid market expansion, the second and the third scientific and technological revolution, the domestic protection of enterprises. To gain more profits, contemporary enterprises used flow line and effective power technically, so as to realize the continuous and massive standard manufacture. To decrease the internal transaction cost, contemporary enterprises carried out shareholding institution and corporate governance and thus established a pyramid-style organization. Contemporary enterprises are much more effective than any other previous enterprises. However, they almost went to the end of their own history and logic.Chapter VIIIn chapter VII, the author elaborated the prospects of the evolution of enterprises. Since 1960s and 1970s, information technology, which included Internet, computers and communication system, on the base of micro-electronic technology, has greatly pushed the productivity into a brand-new stage. The patterns of daily lives have been changed dramatically. The third technological revolution with the characteristics of information systems and life science resulted in that the industries developed from a tangible-staff-based and diminishing-marginal-utility period to a new intangible-information-based and increasing-marginal-utility period (post-industrial period).In this chapter, the author analyzed the main deficiencies against the background of post-industrial period. The author described the new development of enterprises, such as from scale product to oriental product, from the unification of ownership to virtual unification, from shareholder-interests-oriented to stakeholder-interests-oriented, from a pyramid-style to none-boundary organizations. These developments all predicted that a new form of enterprises was coming into being.Chapter VIIIThe author made case study in this chapter. Making use of the established model of enterprise evolution, the author analyzed the development the history of General Motors, from Durant's pioneering work to the firm's rise and fall to illuminate the phases and rules of enterprise evolution. The author introduced the history of this Corporation from Durant's horse-drawn vehicles, Buick, General Motors to Sloan's reform, and then pointed out the crisis, which General Motors confronted with now. Lastly, the author proposed a path to conquer the current crisis.Chapter IXIn the last chapter, the author employed the established model to analyze the development of domestic enterprises. After discussing the external environment and developing phases of Chinese enterprises, the author presented four enlightenments of the model of enterprise evolution. In the end, the author analyzed the development of family factories in China.2. MethodologyThe dissertation adopted the following methods: documentary study, historical comparison, qualitative analysis, deduction and induction. The thesis of this dissertation, being the research about enterprise development, decides that the author to find materials, verify assumptions and discover rules used a host of ancient books and records. Because of the same reason, such currently popular methods as questionnaire, interview and mathematical models were not suitable for this research.3. Merits and DemeritsThe dissertation is original in that it gives thorough analysis of inner driving mechanism of the evolution of enterprises and develops a new idea of combining institution with technology in studying enterprises. The author believes that the evolution of an enterprise is a dynamic process involving the interactions of all elements within the enterprise itself as well as the interactions of the enterprise and its outside environment. Besides, five evolutional rules have been summarized in the dissertation.Based on regular research, the author presents a demonstrative study on the four phases of enterprise evolution, namely, classical enterprises, modern enterprises, contemporary enterprises, and post-contemporary enterprises, to demonstrate the rules in the evolution of enterprises mentioned in the research. This is a combination of theory and history.The author points out the principal guidance for the development of enterprises by integrating the life cycle of individual enterprise into the evolutional phases of all enterprises based on the rules. He also believes the management needs to choose an appropriate development model based on the analysis of the environment and evolutional phases of the enterprise.The limits of this dissertation are as follows: due to the short space of time and the length of the dissertation, the study has not yet delved deeply enough into the technological transformation and its impact on the evolution of the enterprise; though there are general rules in an enterprise's evolution, there are still some specifics under different economic conditions from time to time. However the paper only briefly touches upon general rules in an enterprise's evolution, The link between rules and facts shall be enhanced, which derive from and shall be proved by historical facts. Furthermore, some important facts have not yet been collected, due to limited sources of information. All the issues above mentioned should be addressed in further studies.
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