Research On Growth Of International New Ventures From The Perspective Of Social Network

Oviatt and McDougall (1994) observed the international new ventures or INV, since that time, because of the ever improving internationalization, more and more researchers focused on this area, and this type of organization has been distinguished from the small firm and MNC. From 1990s, social network analysis (SNA) was introduced as a important research trend in the business management area. Then researchers used this method to analysis the international growth of INV, they researched the founders'network, compared network characteristics by stage and so on based on the perspective of social network, made a great contribution in INV area.This study combines SNA and the growth of INV, uses multi-site case research to discuss the network dynamics of early-stage international new ventures from the stage of concept generation to sales growth, revealed the dynamic characteristics of INV network in the process of internationalization. In nowadays, more and more new ventures in our country go to the global market, so it has a great necessity and meaning to analysis this fundamental issue.Data were collected from three organizations in the international logistic industry, and the founders or (and) managers are interviewed. The data was used to build the network matrices, spreadsheets were created using UCINET 6.0 software, and then come to a set of propositions as follows:1. As the INV evolves from conception through to sales growth, there will be an increase in network range and a decrease in network density, the effective size will increase and constraint level will decrease, the closeness centrality will decrease slightly then reach a high level, the betweeness centrality will consistently improve, the INV become increasingly central in terms of the extent to which it acts as a bridge between actors, thus increasing the INV's social capital. 2. In the stage of conception, INV's network interactions will be dominated by social ties rather than economic ties, but the situation will be reversed in the following stages, and it will maintain a certain percentage of family/friend-economic compound relationships.3. The INV's network will be both path-dependent and intentionally managed at all three stages:concept generation, commercialization and sales growth.4. Normally, INV will have a low reputation in all three early stages, but it can still break restrictions in the process of internationalization by fully using its core competence, and get a relatively high reputation.5. As the INV evolves from conception through to sales growth, the relationships are more unstable, and in the later stages from commercialization to sales growth, the mid-term and long-term interactions will stay in a low level.The contribution of this paper includes:Based on the SNA and internationalization process of INV, analyze the dynamic network structure measures and interaction characteristics of INV in our country, discuss its network growth pathway, and get some distinguishing features which are different from their counterpart in western world.