Complementary Or Substitutive? The Impact Of Network Relational Embeddedness On Contractual Governance

Nowadays,market competition is becoming more and more fierce,and the degree of technical complexity is getting higher and higher.More and more companies are engaged in cooperative R&D and technology outsourcing.However,both cooperative R&D and technology outsourcing have some common "disadvantages",including: in the process of cooperation between the two parties,the leakage caused by the sharing and exchange of core knowledge,and the lack of responsibility due to the psychological dependence of the two parties.In this context,the vast majority of enterprises tend to use contractual governance,a formal governance mechanism,to prevent the occurrence of the above-mentioned problems,and to effectively protect their own interests when problems occur.At the same time,companies also hope to promote the efficiency of cooperation and ensure the fairness of cooperation through appropriate contractual governance.In addition,in these knowledge-intensive industries,industry associations and various industry conferences or forums are in the ascendant,and the frequency of formal and informal interactions between enterprises is gradually increasing.Enterprises have gradually formed their own network of relationships.Therefore,scholars have begun to pay attention to the important role of social networks in areas such as cooperative R&D and technology outsourcing.Based on theories of inter-organizational relationship management,they have proposed that social networks,with their control and information dissemination functions,will affect the bilateral governance.structure.Therefore,scholars have studied extensively on how network embeddness(especially relational embedding)affects contractual governance.Although existing studies have extensively explored the impact of network relationship embeddness on contractual governance,their results are controversial.To this end,this study distinguishes between the supervision and coordination functions of contracts and the motivation and ability of enterprises to use contractual governance,respectively,and explores the influence of network relationship embeddness on firms’ motivation and capabilities to deploy the supervision,and coordination and function of contract.Through the analysis of 308 valid survey data collected from IT service providers,this study found that network relationship embeddness will reduce the enterprise’s motivation for contract supervision,but strengthen its motivation for contract coordination.At the same time,network relationship embeddness can help enterprises improve their contract coordination capabilities,but it has no impact on contract supervision capabilities.So far,this research has not only reconciled previous disputes about the relationship between network relationship embedding and contract governance,but also revealed new channels for enterprises to acquire contract governance capabilities.That is,through the information dissemination function of the network to organize learning,and then improve their contractual governance capabilities.