Study On The Dimensions And The Performance Of Virtual Integration

All the time, The "Vertical Integration" is a hot point in the research of the theory of modern enterprise. But by the end of 20th century, many disadvantages of Vertical Integration appeared gradually with the change of market and the development of technology. The developing and application of IT caused the dramatic reduction in transaction costs. More and more enterprises putting there main resources in enhancing the core competence, and outsourcing there non-core business to other company. They response the market by integrating the outside resources through cooperative collaboration. Just as what Michael Hammer(2001) said, "in fact, the Vertical Integration has been replaced by it's opposition, and I call it as 'Virtual Integration'". Michael Dell, the fonder of DELL, also said, the traditional mode of market integration has been changed radically by internet, and the Virtual Integration based on the data assets is replacing of the Vertical Integration based on the physical assets. Clearly, the operation of the enterprises today is coming into the age of "Virtual Integration".Although Michael Hammer and Michael Dell put forward the concept of Virtual Integration, but they did not give us a complete definition of it. Also, the follow-up studies about Virtual Integration were limited. A fully-formed body of theory about Virtual Integration is not formed now. At the same time, in the field of Management and Organization theory, Strategic Management and Supply Chain Management, there are several hot concepts such as Supply Chain, Value Chain, Virtual Supply Chain, Virtual Value Chain, Value Net, Supply Chain Alliances, and Virtual Corporation. I think, there should be a definite link between these concepts and Virtual Integration. So that the main issue of my thesis is focus on the correlative content about Virtual Integration, such as the definition of Virtual Integration, the performance of Virtual Integration, and the technology about Virtual Integration.What should be pointed out emphatically is, the Virtual Integration discussed in my thesis is in the circumstances of supply chain collaboration. There are 6 chapters in this thesis.Chapter one, introduce the context, the significance and the objective of the study, and to describe the research method of this thesis;Chapter two is the literature Review & proposal about the research object;Chapter three is one of the emphases of my thesis. In this chapter, we will try to put forward a complete definition of Virtual Integration and sum up the basic features of Virtual Integration. And then, analyzing the relationship between supply chain, value chain, virtual supply chain, virtual value chain, value net, supply chain alliances, virtual corporation and Virtual Integration, to put them all into a same theoretical framework, so that to get a conceptual model about Virtual Integration. On that basis, we will analyze the value creation of Virtual Integration.Chapter four is another emphases of this thesis. We will analyze and discuss the format of Virtual Integration, the content of Virtual Integration, and the technology of Virtual Integration;Chapter five and Chapter six are about the theoretical analysis and the empirical analysis about the performance of Virtual Integration. First of all, we will state our cognition to the performance of Virtual Integration, and then, put forward a measurement system about Virtual Integration. After that, we will analyze the possible influence of the several factors to the performance, and then to get the research hypothesis. In order to make clear the relationship between the performance of Virtual Integration and the influencing factors, we investigated more than 100 enterprises of manufacturing industry in China. We use structural equation model to analyze the data of the investigating by the aid of SPSS 15 and AMOS 7.0, in order to explore the mechanism for effects of social influencing factors on the performance of Virtual Integration, and to find out the key success factors of Virtual Integration.The innovation points of the thesis include:1. Now, in the field of Management and Organization theory, Strategic Management and Supply Chain Management, there are several hot concepts such as Supply Chain, Value Chain, Virtual Supply Chain, Virtual Value Chain, Value Net, Supply Chain Alliances, and Virtual Corporation. All these concepts are studied in their own fields and there is not a masterstroke to connect them each other. We make clear the relationships between these concepts and Virtual Integration, and to put all of them into a same theoretical framework. Also, we build up a conceptual model of Virtual Integration; 2. In this thesis, we initially build up a theoretical framework of Virtual Integration in which the concept of Virtual Integration, the basic features of basic feature, the dimension of Virtual Integration and the performance of Virtual Integration are included.3. Based on the concept of Virtual Value Chain offered by Jeffrey F. Rayport and John J. Sviokla, we put forward a new concept of Virtual Value Net, and state that enterprises could create new value for the customers in virtual market space based on the traditional market place through Virtual Integration.4. We put forward the concepts of the Virtual Integration Width and the Virtual Integration Intensity. And we considered that the main factors to affect the choice of the Virtual Integration Width and the direction of integration are the environmental uncertainty and the complexity of products. Based on these analysis, we put forward the Four View of the direction of Virtual Integration in order to analyze the Virtual Integration action of the enterprises.5. The inter-organizational system(IOS) is the important technical base of Virtual Integration. In this thesis, we summed up the main technologies of Virtual Integration and the inter-organizational system, and then made the comparative analysis to them.6. We have put forward the concept of the performance of Virtual Integration, and made the empirical analysis to the influencing factors of the performance Virtual Integration, build up the performance model of Virtual Integration. After that, we discovered the key success factors of Virtual Integration.Nonetheless, there are also some deficiencies in the thesis. For example, with regard to the Four View of the direction of Virtual Integration in chapter four, there are a lot of influencing factors to the choice of the direction of Virtual Integration, but we only take the environmental uncertainty and the complexity of products into account. And also, there are a lot of influencing factors to the performance of Virtual Integration, but only limited factors are considered. All the problems will be studied in my follow-up researches.