Intermediate Structure Of The Organization, Operation And Competitive Edge Research

Modern economic theory considers that, pure hierarchies and pure markets are the two kinds of fundamental institutional forms for coordinating economic activity or transaction. And, In the middle of the two extreme forms, there is an institutional form of coordination, which is characterized with some properties of both hierarchies and markets. This new institutional form of coordination is called "inter-firm organization". Inter-firm organization theory is one of the current economic focuses, but up to now, many unknowns on the concept still exist, and no comprehensive theory for the inter-firm organization has been advanced. Many scholars have verified that inter-firm organization is more efficient than the two extreme forms, when it coordinate special transaction. But, no sufficiently detailed and theoretically consistent definition has appeared. Even there is disagreement on what the organizational structure, effective scale, operation mode, and operative mechanism are. The paper focuses on the organizational structure, operative mechanism and competitive advantages of the inter-firm organization, and approves that the new institutional form, inter-firm organization, is an import factor to improving the development of Chinese economy and enhancing the competence of enterprises and industries.There are three parts in this paper: Section one is chapter 2, which defines the academic base and provides a theoretically definition for inter-firm organization. This section aims to establish bases for the farther research of the hypostasis and principles of the inter-firm organization. Section two consists of chapter 3 and chapter 4. Under the view of economic evolvement, analyses the dynamic and static characters of the structure and operation of the inter-firm organization. The hypostatic principles are identified by application of symbolic logic and economic analysis. Section three is chapter 5, which identifies the competitive advantages of the inter-firm organization that are determined by the structure and operation. And indicates the inter-firm organization is important to improving the development of Chinese economy andenhancing the competence of enterprises and industries. That is our ultimately aim of this paper.According to the existence of the core enterprise, the categories of the network of the Inter-firm organization are ample. The network structure is different in different phases of the lifecycle. That is to say, the evolvement of the network structure is dynamic. In the same way, the effective scale of the inter-firm organization is dynamic variance. In other words, the inter-firm organization has different effective scale and network structure in its different phases of the lifecycle. The operative mode of the inter-firm organization is task-oriented, and it has different characters on the different phases of the lifecycle. The trust mechanism and the punish mechanism ensure the efficiency of the operation of the inter-firm organization. The special network structure and operative mode make the inter-firm organization has many competitive advantages, such as rapidity advantage, research and development advantage, cooperation advantage, and economies of scale. And the information technology and well trust environment are of advantage to maintain persisting competitive advantages.