The Research Of Inter-enterprise Cooperation Mechanism And Trust Relation Building

The essence of marketing economy is exchange within organizations and individuals engaging in all kinds of businesses according to their demands. The characteristics of enterprises require them to affiliate with other related organizations. In recent years, with the globalization of economy, change of market environment, personalization of demand, increase of competing pressure, more and more enterprises feel that it is very difficult for them to deal with this rapid changing and uncertain external environment with their own limited resources and capabilities. To get high profit using their own investment, they will pay off expensive materials and time cost, with the risk of inflexibility and weak managerial capability as well. Therefore, it is an ideal choice for these enterprises to utilize external resources to realize their strategy and reduce their risks through inter-enterprise cooperation.Based on the above conditions, inter-enterprise cooperation and inter-enterprise trust is presented in this paper. It is composed by four parts, cooperation theoretical basis, resources of cooperation advantages and cooperation patterns, trust building for enterprise cooperation establishment and maintenance, and empirical test to the hypotheses based on trust and cooperation model.In the first part, theoretical basis of inter-enterprise cooperation, that is, the reason for cooperation and internal motivation, are studied. Through reviewing the related literatures in inter-enterprise field, a two-dimension model involving in economic dimension and enterprise strategy dimension is put forward. However, in the operation of enterprises, it is very difficult to give a clear interface between market tractions and enterprise hierarchy, diversification and specialization, mostly in the mean state. From economic dimension, the enterprise cooperation changes the dichotomy of market and enterprise hierarchy into trichotomy of market, enterprise and inter-enterprise. Enterprises can determine the mode of economic transaction as per trade uncertainty, frequency and assets specialty. From enterprise strategy dimension, enterprise cooperation changes the dichotomy of diversification and specialization into another trichotomy of diversification, specialization and enterprise cooperation. Enterprises can choose its management mode according to its scale and scope. Due to the simplicity of dichotomy, the triochotomy idea will be more suitable for enterprise practices.In the second part, the sources of cooperation advantages and patterns of enterprises cooperation are introduced. The advantages of cooperation include resources complement, synergy effect, transaction cost reduction, core competence cultivation, market response acceleration, learning opportunity and efficiency enhancement enterprise reputation elevation and relation assets building. Enterprise cooperation pattern can be summarized into five-force cooperation model, which put forward that enterprise can build cooperation networks with five parties including enterprises in same industry, suppliers, clients, potential entrant and related products manufactures, each cooperation force has its special cooperation pattern.The third part is the main body of the paper, in which trust - the key for cooperation establishment and maintenance - is discussed. In several factors related to cooperation building, trust is the most important factor to build lasting cooperation relation. Trust building is the fundamental for successful sustainable cooperation networks. Based on the former research achievements, a three-level trust and cooperation model is given, which divided trust into three dimensions, linked trust, calculated trust and institutional trust. Whether the trustee can get trustor's trust is influenced by characteristics from three levels, individual in the enterprise, enterprise itself and institution environment. Among them, linked trust is determined by the individuals' characteristics in trustee enterprise, calculated trust by trustee's own characteristics, and institutional trust by institutional characteristics. The three-level characteristics influence cooperation results through the three-dimension trust.In the last part, a theoretical verification model for enterprise trust and cooperation framework is built based on three-level model. The empirical test is conducted by questionnaire collecting, data analysis, model fit test, medi-varible test and control variable study etc. The results from empirical test shows that six hypotheses among eight are supported, which include integrity's positive influence to linked trust, communication's positive influence to linked trust, enterprise capability's positive influence to calculative trust, reputation's positive influence to calculative trust, institutional conditions' positive influence to institutional trust and linked trust's positive influence to cooperation results. Two hypotheses unsupported by test are calculative trust's positive influence to cooperation results and institutional trust's positive influence to cooperation results. In the end, the results from the test are evaluated and analyzed.