The Impact Of Information Technology On Firm Boundaries

Firm boundaries is one of the key issues of modern theories. Since "nature of the business" written by Coase, how to recognize the nature of production and trading properties, divide enterprise and the market boundaries, the two resource allocation methods in order to seek a more rational and more effective firm boundaries, is going to be the important topic that theoretical as well as entrepreneurs should think. In the period of industrial and agricultural economy, most of the transactions between various economic organizations are physical resources such as land, labor force and capital, so the Transaction Cost View (TCV), if market transactions or vertical integration will lower more cost and occupy scarce resources, is prevalent. However, as society entered the era of knowledge economy, under the powerful blows by IT symbolized by the Internet, the key factor during operations is the core intangible resources including knowledge, skills and information. The sustainable competitive advantage lies in the mastery of these resources and effective use. Thus in the present, some new changes have taken place in firm boundaries such as virtual organizations, strategic alliances, virtual enterprises, fixed outsourcing partnerships and franchising system and so on, bureaucratic and market mechanisms reflect the trend of merging, it is hard to say where is the firm boundaries, and even some academics have suggested there are no clear boundaries of the firms, the traditional view of boundaries has encountered new challenges.Based on the theories of management, economics and information, combined with the existing research results and methods about firm boundaries, business development strategy and enterprise information, the paper want to study the impact of information technology on firm boundaries, try to find the factors affecting lateral border, vertical border and capacity border, and get the law under the influence of these factors, then provide related basis about the development strategies such as business integration strategy, diversification strategy, developing strategic alliances.The main content of the thesis is composed of seven chapters:the first chapter is an introduction, introduces the research background, objectives and methods, the definition of the concepts presented, and the articles of the framework and innovations; the second chapter is the review for the domestic and international relevant theories; third chapter is the definition of firm boundaries based on the Transaction Cost View (TCV) and the Organizational Competence View (OCV); Chapter IV defines the boundaries by the previous chapter in two dimensions to consider the impact of information technology and obtains the model; fifth chapter makes suggestions about enterprise boundaries'change under the new trend and the strategic options, it is the practical significance of this theory; Chapter VI makes a summary of full text and proposes the deficiencies and future research directions.