| As internet and ebusiness technology appear, firms" distribution channel and related business activities will be influnced. The application of ebusiness among firms and their channel partners makes the channel management and marketing take on many new characteristics and respond to dynamic market and customer demand and then get the new value. However, as IT embedded into related business activities more closely, many business models about IT value can’t reflect the reality of business. Managers can’t divide the information technology from traditional business function and can’t know clearly how IT influences all kinds of business activities and then gain competitive advantage. Meanwhile, firms usually omit the leveraging control in the process of applying new technology when firms make IT application among firms. Also with dynamic environment, it seems that firms couldn’t make a fit between IT-based business capabilities and dynamic market. So the process of gaining competitive advantage covers a chain of mechanisms to control difficultely, including business improvement, interfirm management and respond to environment. The target of this study is to probe into such a complex process, to help managers understand the creative path of competitive advantage.Part of research to this topic has been appeared in IS field, supply chain field and marketing field. The research in IS field focused on the direct effect of related variables of single firm and firms, such as IT resources, IT capability and other complementary factors. These research emphasize the effects of IT on decreasing process cost and optimizing process structure in inter collaborative process but omit the effects on improving collaborative relationship and reacting environment. The research in supply chain field and marketing field focus on the effect of IT on improving interfirm communication and cooperation and interactive relationship began to appear in research. But these researches haven’t explored the creative process of business value of IT from the perspective of integration of IT, interfirm relationship and environment. Some complex leveraging control and relationship in the transiting process between technology capability and business capability cann’t be known. Many managers can’t indicate how and when firms gain competitive advantage by applying IT.This study summarizes the main research mode of business value of IT and research on interfirm IT application from IS field, supply chain field and marketing field, and analyzes the main characteristics and limitation. And then the study summarizes some main therories on business value of IT, including dynamic capability view, extended resource-based view and contingency theory, and finaly constructs the research framework.The research framework is made up of IT compentency, dynamic capability, competitive advantage, relationship governance and market environment. The whole framework is divided into two stages:the creative stage of dynamic capability and the creative stage of competitive performance. Specificly, the creative stage of dynamic capability describes the transformative process from IT competency to dynamic capability, covers the relationship between technology capabitily and business capability and reflects the innovated effect of techonogy to businesss activities; The creative stage of competitive performance focuses on the relationship of creating value by dynamic capability and the fit with environment. It indicates how firms can use dynamic capability to make competitive actions in dynamic environment.Based on the practice of inter firm collaborative ebusiness, this research framework proves the transformative process from IT competency to emergent business capability and then creates competitive performance from the perspecitive of information, knowledge and relationship. It rethinks the path of gaining value by IT-enablcd ebusiness innovation under dynamic environment. It has innovativeness in structure and variables. From the structure, the transformative process between IT compentency and dynamic capability indicates the innovation and dynamic effects of these inmediated capabilties; From the variables, the interactive and sharing effects of IT extends the traditional meaning to explain the process of intcrfirm IT application from a new perspective. Therefore, this new framework can reflect such a complex process in the round.Next, three empirical content based on the research framework are presented:the stage characteristics and mechanism of the creative process of competitive performance by interfirm IT application, the moderating effect of relationship governance on the process of interfirm IT application and the fit mechanism between dynamic capability and environment.Based on survey datas from184firms, this study used OLS regression analysis to examine the creative stage of dynamic capability and the creative stage of competitive performance, and then used PI.S to prove the whole creative path of firms" competitive performance. Finally, this study analysed the moderating effect of relationship governance (in the process of interfirm IT application) and market environment (in the market competitive process). The main results are shown as below:1. The creative process of interfirm business value of IT in dynamic environment is made up of two stages:the creative stage of dynamic capability (interfirm IT application process) and the creative stage of competitive performance (market competitive process). Specificly, the creative stage of dynamic capability describes the transformative process from process collaborative capability and knowledge sharing capability to relational capability, firm agility and operational innovation. It reflects the innovative mechanism of technology capability to business capability in the process of interfirm IT application. The creative stage of competitive performance focuses on the relationship between emergent business capabitliy and competitive performance and the fit between business capabitliy and environment in this process. This result proved the transformative relationship from IT competency to emergent business capabitliy and the process of gaining competitive performance, emphasized the mediating effect of emergent business capabilities.2. There exists a moderating effect of interfirm relationship government to process collaborative capabitliy and it improves the effect on rational capabitliy and firm agility from process collaborative capabitliy in the process of IT application. This result supported the agreement about interfirm collaborative relationship in many theories, for example, relational view indicated that the key resource may exist outside of organizasional boundry and if firm makes some investment on specific relational assets and integrates inner and outer resources, it will increase the productive efficiency on value-chain as such relationship may become the source of competitive performance; Resource-base view indicated that collaborative relationship can create scarce and inimitable capabitliy by integrating specifice capabitliy and resource of partners. From the results, we can find that partner relationship is not only the catalysator of interfirm IT application, but also has the direct effect on emergent business capabitliy. It indicates that the formation and development of partner relationship is good for steady interfirm strategy alinement and gaining all kinds of valuable resources from collaborative partner.3. From the moderating analysis of product complex and market competence, it is found that product complex improves the positive effect from firm agility to competitive perfonnance and market competence restrains the positive effect of relational capabitliy and improves the positive effect of operational innovation on competitive perfonnance. This result proved that there exists a fit mechanism to influence the creation of competitive and it embodys that different business capabilities will have different effects on competitive performance under different market environment.Such a complex contingency influence focusing on different business process hasn’t been presented in prior research. That’s the first discover in my research though some research mentioned the contingency effect of environment. For example, Eve D. Rosenzweig did some research on the contingency effect from product complex, environment munificence and market variability on firm’s e-collaboration; Karthik N.S. lye et al. found that the interaction of demand uncertainty, product turbulence and B2B supply chain integration has a neglect effect on firm perfonnance.The innovativenesses of this studv are summarized as below:1. This study divied the business capability from technology capabitliy and analysed their relationship and its effect on competitive performance, probe into the complex process of value creation in dynamic environment. Meanwhile, we added two moderating variables:relationshipo governance and market environment and explain the complex traits of interfinn IT application, strategic competitive actions, relationship governance and environment fit. Such a framework extends the prior research mode which focus on operational process.2. This study added the key mediating variables of dynamic capaibities of three kinds and analyzes the relationship from relational capability, firm agility and operational innovation to value creation. Although prior research has much aggrement on the relationship between dynamic capability and competitive advantage, it still lacks enough empirical research to support them. And much research mainly focus on IT flexibility or supply chain agilty to examine how firms can respond the change of market. This study chooses three main traits of dynamic capability to stand different aspects of business innovation by IT application. It extends the research of dynamic capability and has innmovative implication for managers to understand the complex path of value creation.3. This study considered the moderating effects of product complex and market competency and found market environment has not only positive effect but also negative effect on performance. This result enriched prior results of some research on market environment and perfonnance and highlighted the complex traits of market environment and the fit process of different business capabitliy.This study is a new exploration on co-creation process between firms and downstream channel partners. It extends the prior research by combining IT technology and business management and emphasized the moderating effects of interfinn relationship governance and market competency. Meanwhile, this study focused on Chinese new supply chain management with ebusiness technology and it will be good for summarizing the mechanism of value creation and improving industry structure optimization. |
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