Theoretical Re-Explanation Of Enterprise Networks And Theoretical Analysis Of Corporate Trust Mechanism: An Introduction

In recent years, great changes have taken place in corporate strategic behaviors and the operating manners. As an emerging phenomenon, enterprise network has drawn broad attention. In March 2000, SMJ published a special edition on strategic networks, which could be an indicator that enterprise network has become a hot issue in academy research. Various scholars have studied on enterprise network from different perspectives and various schools have made different explanation for the nature of enterprise network, but we don't think past researches have put enough emphasis on the nature of enterprise network. And we notice that almost all the past explanations use the term in economics-" Network Effect"- as premises, which itself is an ambiguous concept. In such a background, we chose " theoretical explanation of enterprise network" and " theoretical analysis of corporate trust mechanism" as the topic of my dissertation. This dissertation is the first part of the whole research project that I expect to carry out in the future.The first chapter introduces the research background, intentions, topic field, research method and innovation in this dissertation. The second chapter focuses on the literature review. I first discussed various definitions of enterprise networks and made my own definition based on my own research and understanding. Then I summarized all the relevant research according to different academic schools and various theoretical explanations respectively. In the last section of this chapter I pointed out the common limitations of the past research (especially in theoretical explanation of the nature of the enterprise network) and I believe a counter responses to the pessimistic argument of " tragedy of common leys (Hardin, 1968)" should be made to deepen our understanding of the nature of the enterprise network. The third chapter is our own theoretical re-explanation of the enterprise network. This chapter and the following chapter are the core part of this dissertation. In this chapter, I used the concept of Network Specific Investment and Repeated Games to give a theoretical explanation for formation and expansion of the enterprise network. I not only fight back the point of "tragedy of common leys" but also clarify the concept of Network Effect. I pointed out that network-specific investment as credible commitment force each participative enterprise in the Western scholars use " strategic networks" to describe this phenomenon.networks to come to a unilateral self-enforcing agreement respectively, thus all the member entities stimulate each other and the network come into being and continue to expand. So, the incumbent entities and new participative members can share all the network-specific investment and the reward to each member will increase along with the number of the members. This is what so called Network Effect. Then I used Game Theory to analyze the formation and expansion process of the enterprise network. And so, I got a clear theoretical explanation of the formation and expansion of enterprise network in this chapter. The forth chapter is the theoretical analysis of the corporate trust mechanism. I believe that the critical mechanism in the enterprise networks is corporate trust mechanism. I first discussed the definition of corporate trust and pointed out the meaning of personal trust cannot be applied in corporate trust directly. The definition of corporate trust is that one self-interested and rational corporation will not carry out opportunism to harm others' benefit in order to attain extra benefits. I began with the solution to "Prison Dilemma" and then made analysis form the perspectives from credible commitment and repeated games. I pointed out the two critical steps in the establishment of trust mechanism: judging the credibility of partner and deciding whether to be honest or to be opportunistic. My theoretical analysis can be a reference to understanding these two steps. And my final point of view is that corporate trust mechanism is an endogentic r...