The Network Of Small And Medium Firms: Structure, Resource And Performance

In the market environment of much intense competition, small and medium firms haverecognized that one firm hardly can win the living and developing space only by himself. Thefirm that wants to live must stick together with any benefit aggregation to form a inter-firmnetwork and develop by cooperation. With the conception changing from competition tocooperation, firm-organization formation also takes place some subtle transformations. Manyregions depend on regional resource superiority form industrial groups or industrial aggregation.At same time, because the cooperation profits from different aggregations' industrial relationshipor geography nearness, they naturally form the inter-aggregation relationship and promote thedevelopment of industrial-chain. The structure of the "point-line-surface-network" brings aboutcomplex and dense connections. The connections accelerate the firms'multi-level circulation ofthe business resource, fund resource and societal resource and then have an good effect to theregional economics. Then, in an inter-firm network, how do the network characters influence thatfirms acquire resources and create achievement? How do the resources affect the achievement?The study proposes that in a regional network, the type of the relationship, the strength ofthe tie and the position of the firm between small and medium firms have an important effect onthe capability of acquiring resources and. Creating achievement. The capability of acquiringresource is an significant factor to the firm's achievement.The study relies on the project of 2005 Shanxi province credit investigation to small and mediumfirms. The investigation firms mainly include some small and medium coal-coke-iron relatedfirms coming from Taiyuan,Jinzhong,Linfen,Changzhi,Yuncheng,lvliang,Xinzhou andJincheng. The study mainly carries on through collecting the data by questionnaires,aliveinvestigations and investigating reports to digging and analyze the data. The following fivequestions were studied in depth: 1.the given network structure characters of the firms.2.theresources characters of the firms in the network.3.the performance of the firms in the network. 4.the influence of the network structure to the acquiring resources capability and creatingachievement.5.the effects of the resources coming from the firm network to the performance inthe network. The results of the analyses supported initial research hypothesis, i.e. the inter-firmnetwork structure have strong influence on firms'acquiring resources capabilities and creating performance, the capabilities to acquire resources have strong influence on thefirms'performance.