The Inter-firm Network And Firm Competition

With the rapid developing of the global economy, how to effectively implement business strategy has become a common question among firms. Nowadays more and more firms realize that it's hard to survive in the fiercely competitive circumstances without cooperation. Since 1980s, companies, especially multinational corporations, based on strategic adjustment, have changed their ways of competition-- a shift from confrontational competition to cooperative competition. Joint ventures, strategic alliances and supply chain partnerships among firms have been considered as the main forms to achieve strategic resource sharing. In order to keep pace with the changing market environment, more and more firms within the same fields try to focus on an area. As time passes, a powerful relational network in a special location comes into being. In value of the network resource, companies exchange information rapidly, cooperate effectively, and exhibit their competitive advantages from strength to strength. So during the course of developing the network, the firms characterized as geography cluster seem to have more advantageous competitive conditions than the companies out of the location. While even in the same location, each individual firm can't get the same advantage. They have different inter-firm networks which have profound impact on their competition. Consequently, the following research questions have emerged: how far had the industrial network influenced firms' competition? Whether the inter-firm network within the cluster is the main reason to explain the competitive advantage of the industrial districts, or there are still other factors with great influences which hadn't been discovered? And, if the network really has effect on enterprise's competition, how powerful is it?This study proposes that the inter-firm networking relationships within the cluster, such as the type of network, the targets involved and the position in the network all will influence the competition of the focal firm. They are very important facilitating factors of the competitiveness of firms within the cluster.The study chose firms operating in the packaging and printing industry in Jinping district of Shantou city as the target sample, collected the data by questionnaires, and used statistical methods to analyze them. The following three questions were studied in depth: 1. the given...