Enterprise Social Network Centricity And Market Coupling, Political Coupling

In the background of the increasingly globalized and integrated world economy, which causes complex market environment, the majority of Chinese enterprises could not get all the necessary knowledge and resources within their official boundaries. They need to cross organizational boundaries to access to critical knowledge and resources from the outside, by cooperating with other organizations. How to get the access to critical knowledge and resources with the construction and evolution of social network is an important subject of Chinese enterprises to improve their core competence today.There are many distinctions the current papers, since the existing literatures research only on one of the two subjects, which are the structure level and the relational level. In this paper, we research the relationships between both levels of social network, based on the market ties and political ties. Firstly, based on institutional theory, we define the two kinds of network ties, and deduce the hypothesises. Then, we make a multiple-case research on5companies, which are in different industries. We use Peng&Luo’s questionnaire to measure the network ties and take Burt’s method to survey the centralization in the multiple-case research. Besides, we validate the conclusion by computer simulation.Through the Exploratory study of five companies in different industries, we find that:(1) Corporate social network structure affects market ties. The enterprise market strength changes from weak to strong or medium, while the corporate social network centrality evolutes from low to high.(2) Corporate social network structure affects political ties. Political ties strength changes from weak to medium, while the corporate social network centrality evolutes low to high.The contributions of this research are following:(1) Integrated these two levels into the same infrastructure, this study make up the existing there are some deficiencies of the social network research.(2) This research develops the theories originated in Burt (1992)&Gulati (2000),by multiple case analysis and simulation, and demonstrate the relationship between the enterprise market ties and political ties and the social network centrality. Conclusions of this study can make reference to how China’s enterprises to obtain the knowledge and resources through the optimization and adjustment of social networks. China’s enterprises shall deal with a good market ties and political ties, to obtain two different kinds of resources, in accordance with their own structural characteristics of social networks. But in the process of integration into the world economy, market ties provide knowledge and resources in the business operation of dominant position. The firms should reinforce the market ties of their key cooperator to make efforts on the developing and preserving, in order to form Sustainable community of interests. In addition, companies should take the occasion of the optimization and adjustment of social networks, and moderately enhance strength of political ties to create a suitable space for the operations of enterprises.