Strategic Networks:Overcoming The Liability Of Outsidership,Embeddedness Costs And Entrepreneurial Orientation

The network may have become the most important metaphor of this era,which is used to refer to the relationship between all independent subjects.In the business practices,the concepts of corporate association and organizational association have been long existed,such as cross-shareholdings,interlocking directors,related transactions,corporate alliances,and industry associations as well as several other formal and informal institutional arrangements.With the development of social network theory,the specific objects and meanings involved in the theory become more clear and are gradually incorporated into the theoretical study of strategic management.Within the management research field,the network is conceptualized as an organizational model that can position managers or entrepreneurs in a more competitive position.This is why the “network” is preceded by a “strategic”,and formed a special concept of strategic networks.In recent years,theoretical research on corporate strategic networks has gradually become an important topic in the study of management theory.First of all,what factors have promoted the formation of corporate strategic networks,what are their motives,and whether companies can gain competitive advantage by occupying the core position of the business network? Second,what are the cost inputs that enterprises need to make in order to build a strategic network? Are these investments matched with the needs of the company's optimal operating point? Are there any problems such as over-embeddedness and over-investment? What are their mutual mechanisms? Thirdly,when enterprises have information advantages of strategic networks,their strategic orientation will be further enhanced,or they will be replaced by other vested interests.In the face of industrial competition and changes in the legal environment,how do companies make dynamic strategic adjustment? The answers to these questions still have important theoretical and practical significance.Based on this,this dissertation explores the dynamic mechanism of the formation,behavior and results of the enterprise strategic network.This dissertation discusses the construction of strategic networks from the perspective of the liability of outsidership in international business.With the development of the enterprise network theory,the view based on the enterprise business network was soon introduced into the international business research field,thereby revising the theoretical model of gradual entry,which opened the way for follow-up research.This dissertation focuses on the corporate network in the cross-border mergers and acquisitions market.In the framework of international business theory,the use of the business network concept has expanded the research on the boundary of cross-border mergers and acquisitions,weakened the traditional nature of the borders based on geographical location,and stressed the importance of the corporate business network structure and its location.And different from the concept of cultural distance commonly used in research culture in the international business field,this dissertation uses the concept of cultural friction to avoid the potential bias of the concept of cultural distance for a long time,and introduces the concept of cultural friction to explain the non-gradual international expansion theory.Based on the theoretical construction of embeddedness cost,compared with previous studies,this dissertation enriches the research on the possible negative mechanism of enterprise network embeddedness.Most of the previous studies focused on network revenue,and neglected the investigation of the negative mechanisms such as embeddedness cost.This dissertation summarizes this phenomenon as the resource curse phenomenon embedded in the enterprises networks,which is a useful complement to the strategic networks at the micro level.This dissertation points out that strategic networks can provide convenience for enterprises to acquire and use resources of all parties,but at the same time,network exclusivity,embedded inertia,and opportunistic behavior can all erode corporate network benefits.This dissertation finds that excessive network embeddedness hinders continuous improvement of productivity,which is derived from following mechanisms: excessive network embeddedness makes information redundancy among enterprises,and the imitate-follow effect makes excessive investment seriously;enterprises have to encounter more problems and difficulties,such as information coordination and benefit negotiation,to maintain network relationship,which leads to extra cost;enterprises with abundant network resources may tend to more emphasis on marketable operational abilities,resulting in resource decentralization and less investment on innovation,which is finally not beneficial to productivity improvement in the long run.This dissertation also enriched the research based on the influence of the strategic networks on entrepreneurial orientation,and established a dynamic model based on the information advantage of the stratetic networks.This dissertation,through theoretical analysis and empirical test,explores the impact mechanism of information superiority conditions based on the market position of the enterprise to the enterprise's entrepreneurial orientation,and points out that because information is not distributed symmetrically and evenly throughout the market,companies that gain information advantages have the potential to have economic value and can stimulate entrepreneurial orientation.;the market position of the enterprise will not necessarily increase the entrepreneurial orientation of the enterprise,and the enterprise may be more inclined to use its market position to gain benefits.The study also found that the advantages of the company's network information have a direct effect on the entrepreneurial orientation,and also have a complementary effect with the market position of the enterprise.The information advantage has a significant effect in reversing the non-active entrepreneurial orientation.At the same time,the improvement of the legal environment can enhance the mutual trust as well as cooperation,and reduce the occurrence of opportunistic behavior among the enterprises,thus positively moderated the mechanism of enterprise information advantage and market position to the entrepreneurial orientation.Finally,the author summarizes the conclusions of above researches,discusses possible theoretical contributions and practical implications,and discusses the research limitations and future research directions.