Mechanism Study Of Strategic Schemas On Firm Growth Of Hidden Champions In Chinese Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the backbone of national economic development.After 40 years'development from the reform and opening-up,China has become the largest manufacturing power driving the global economic development.However,the present situation of "Made in China" is large but not strong enough,especially in the fields of key components."Made in Germany" is regarded as he benchmarking in global manufacturing,and its success cannot stand away from the 1307 German firms all of whom occupy the first place in their niche markets.Hidden champions,described by Hermann Simon as companies whose market dominance belies their low profiles,are considered as an important issue in both business and academic fields.To realize "Made in China 2025" program,and transform China from a manufacturer of quantity to one of quality,how to cultivate a wide array of hidden champions turns into an urgent task.Strong leadership and ambitious goals are identified as the core in the hidden champions' lessons.Scholars in strategic management also show the close relation between managerial cognition and strategy formulation and implementation.Throughout the development process of Chinese manufacturing,how could the excellent entrepreneurs adapt to or shape the environment relying on their highly market conscious,and how could they overcome the interference from other factors and focus on the centralized business profiles?From the perspective of cognitive structure,that is"strategic schemas",the research question of this dissertation includes the following three issues.First,what are the key managerial cognition factors for Chinese hidden champions pursuing the high level of firm growth?Second,how could regional environment and industrial structure influence the relation between strategic schemas and firm growth?Three,how could structure attributes of strategic schemas interplay with cognitive orientation,to affect the level of firm growth together?This dissertation explores these issues from three studies.In the study I,a multi-case study of hidden champions has been conduct to explore the mechanism that strategic schema influence firm growth in the view of cognitive process.On the basis of study ?,study ? goes on further empirical study and puts forward a concept model of the relation between strategic schemas and firm growth,also including the moderating effects of the degree of marketization and industrial centralization.The model is tested based on a panel data analysis of 140 Chinese listed hidden champions with 537 observations during 2013-2016.Then the third study from the integrated view to explore the multiple antecedents from strategic schemas on firm growth,by carrying out the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis(fsQCA)of 21 firms to generate the architecture types for high level of firm growth.Finally,the empirical results indicate the conclusions below:First,the centrality and complexity of strategic schema are positively related with firm growth of hidden champions.The centrality of strategic schema hits the spot well to the business specialization of hidden champions,increasing the competence and sophistication of their existing knowledge through repeated interpretation and use.While the complexity of strategic schema provides the potential to utilize more dimensions for understanding and discriminating the opportunities and challenges in the changing environment.Given the cognitive process,the centrality of strategic schema mainly affects the "internalization" stage of cognitive process,by fit new stimuli into their existing mindsets.And the comprehensiveness and connectedness in complexity affect the stages of "visualization" and "internalization" respectively.Second,the mechanism of strategic schema on the growth of hidden champions relies on the industrial and regional environment.As the industry leader,the industrial structure has close relation with the growth or development of hidden champions.And the continuous but unbalanced development is a special situation which Chinese hidden champions should meet in the socioeconomic transformation of China.Specifically,both the industrial concentration and the degree of marketization negatively moderate the relationship between the centrality of strategic schemas and firm growth.But their moderate roles are not significant for the complexity of strategic schemas.Three,there are different configuration types of strategic schemas for hidden champions to achieve high level of firm growth.Three different configuration types of strategic schemas are identified for the sustainable growth of hidden champions.Namely,when the market orientation is low,and the technology orientation is high,centralized strategic schema is better for achieving high level of firm growth(Type I);when the market and technology orientations are both high,complex strategic schema is better for firm growth(Type ?);when the market orientation is high,pursuing high level of centrality and complexity of strategic schema simultaneously(Type ?)could promote firm growth.This dissertation contributed to previous studies in managerial cognition and hidden champions in three ways.First,pro,vide a micro lens to explain the mechanism from strategic schemas to firm growth.This study has investigates the roles of two key properties of strategic schemas,complexity and focus,in the cognitive process,and them affect firm growth of hidden champions.Enrich the managerial cognition literatures by offering effective explanation for the "puzzle" between cognitive structure and process,and filling in the research gap of the long-term mechanism from the characteristics of managerial cognition in Chinese firms.Second,construct the configuration types for high level of firm growth from the integrated view of cognitive content and structure.The strategic schemas rely on the cognitive content and structure simultaneously,but few work take both of them into the research design.This dissertation use aggregation analysis to clarify the interaction of cognitive content and structure in affecting the firm growth of hidden champion,which fills in the gap in managerial cognition and propose deeper understandings for the key lessons of hidden champions and their growth path.Three,extend and supplement the researches on hidden champion based on the high dynamic in the growth of Chinese hidden champions.Existed literatures on hidden champions lack the vertical consideration like "how to become hidden champions","how could hidden champions get sustainable growth".This dissertationfocus on the firm growth of hidden champion from the dynamic view.The consensus that hidden champions are remarkably similar across countries has been confirmed from the experience of developed countries.However,a great part of hidden champions from China are pursuing the strategy of cost leadership in the catch-up process,for limited resource and poor technological capacity base.And the changing environment of market and institutional environment in China set higher requirements in organizational adaptation field.Thus the development of Chinese hidden champions rising from late-comers show a different scene.