Taking the network economy as the strategic background and taking the enterprise strategy as the research object, this paper probes into the levels of enterprise strategy, and points out that the importance of enterprise strategy in the network economy is rising from the behavior mode of allocating resources to a systematic ability of enterprises.
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First, look at the network economy from the strategic transformation of mobile phone manufacturers
(1) Ericsson, one of the global mobile phone manufacturers, launched the mobile phone outsourcing strategy of "profit recovery plan", which stopped the production business of Ericsson mobile phones except China, and the company only implemented strategic management on the core business of Ericsson mobile phones. This strategy of Ericsson marks the multinational company's timely response strategy to the phenomenon of network economy.
With the rapid development of computer, information and communication technology (CIT), especially Internet technology, the global economy has not only entered a state of globalization, but also with the support of the above-mentioned technological progress, factors of production are emerging in the world in a new economic form. People generally call this economic form based on the application of information or knowledge the new economy. In the new economy, this kind of economic activity based on CIT and its network is called network economy, because this technology embodies the unprecedented dependence and interdependence of economic subjects on style, which makes the behavior of economic subjects in almost every corner of the world tend to be invisible rather than tangible.
It must be said that how to deal with this economic form and make corresponding strategic innovations is a key issue for enterprises to consider when formulating strategies in the network economy era.
(B) Talk about the traditional economic conditions of enterprise strategy
Under the traditional economic conditions, enterprise strategy is an action plan for enterprises to integrate internal and external resources and form asset-based capabilities. Its goal is to create long-term and future strategic choice value for enterprises, which is the core foundation for enterprises to maintain their competitive advantage. From the mechanism of value creation, enterprise strategy is not only the result of enterprise system arrangement, but also the product of enterprise internal organization, and is also influenced by internal and external technologies and related consequences of decision-making cognition. System, organization, technology and cognition can be regarded as the basic framework of enterprise strategy to create value to a great extent.
Under the condition of traditional economy, the value creation of enterprise strategy is typically embodied in the American strategic management scientist Mike? 6? In the academic thought of 1 porter, the application of enterprise strategy is to gain a competitive advantage over competitors in use value. In other words, the highest goal of enterprise competition strategy is to make enterprises form a gap in the stock of material resources; Competitive advantage is actually the value of material resources based on artificial barriers. In addition, another embodiment of Peter's overall strategic thought is the enterprise competition view based on this competitive strategy. Porter always believes that the essential performance of enterprises in the market is the cruel competition fact. Competition is a process in which market participants try their best to obtain resources and form barriers to entry.
Therefore, the enterprise strategy under the traditional economy is a material cost strategy driven by diminishing returns and the product of the experience level of strategic decision-making groups within the enterprise. Among them, integration strategy is the strategic preference for enterprises to gain competitive advantage, including internal integration (independent development) strategy and external integration strategy, including horizontal integration and vertical integration based on mergers and acquisitions. In other words, the enterprise strategy dominated by the law of diminishing returns usually pursues scale advantage, and the competitive advantage of enterprises is formed by the richness of material resources.
(3) The era of network economy is relative to the material traditional economy.
Generally speaking, the material economy is based on the possession of resources, and improving the input-output efficiency of resources is the basic goal of enterprises engaged in production activities.
Because the basic organizational unit of material resources is atom, it is a production factor with material loss in economic analysis, and the output efficiency of economic activities presents the law of diminishing returns, that is, the increase of output decreases with the increase of input factors. The economic law of diminishing returns directly affects the decision-making behavior of enterprises as industrial organizations. It is not difficult to see that the material economy is essentially an economic form with limited resources. How to eliminate the bottleneck effect of this resource has become the strategic starting point of enterprises. Therefore, the competitive advantage of enterprises is mainly manifested in the end product market operated by enterprises directly owning production factors based on natural resources.
Network economy is a new economic form based on information and its information technology networking. Because of the causal relationship between information and knowledge in essence, network economy is also an information economy and a knowledge economy. Network economic activities realize value through "open" information, so that economic subjects can obtain the risk probability of the market environment provided by information. That is to say, if the network economic activities can't effectively make the provided information or encodable knowledge recognized by customers, then the value of such economic activities can't be realized. In other words, the higher the "openness" of this information, the greater the value of economic activities supported by information. For market organizations, any form of direct communication is possible.
Because the basic unit of information is bit-by-bit, the result of factor input-output in network economy does not conform to the loss attribute of factor input in traditional economy, which leads to the economic activities in network economy mainly driven by information and its network. It differs from the traditional economy in that the role of knowledge in economic development is greatly enhanced. The revival of Internet in 1990s proved the theoretical analysis result of this economics. Computer software enterprises, Internet network providers and telecom enterprises that process information on a large scale and use information networks are typical market organizations that realize increasing returns.
Therefore, we can see that the essence of network economy is to provide an interdependent system supply for economic subjects. "Leading one thing and driving everything" is a unique phenomenon in the networked market. How to coordinate this interdependent information network is the strategic starting point of the enterprise.
Second, the network enterprise strategy
Compared with the conditions and forms of enterprise strategy under the traditional economic conditions, the enterprise strategy under the network economy is an open and increasing income-driven network strategy.
(A) the so-called network strategy, in fact, is the network as the main means of enterprise resources for value cultivation and application, the implementation of network management for enterprises, to achieve sustainable competitive advantage of enterprises, to maintain the strategic competitiveness of enterprises. The connotation of network strategy includes two aspects. First, the enterprise's understanding of the network is beyond the general category of the network. It includes not only the application of information technology and its network by enterprises, but also the mixed operation of enterprise organization forms. Secondly, the enterprise's network strategy refers to the integration of internal and external network construction. Internally, enterprises tend to reduce or eliminate the intermediate hierarchical structure, making the organizational structure flat, and the way of resource combination tends to be the team form dominated by external "customers" personalization or scale customization demand; Externally, while carrying out economic activities of property right transaction, we also pay attention to the organizational relations of innovative value, and regard these organizational relations as the main starting point of enterprise strategy.
In fact, networking strategy is the deepening of enterprise cooperation strategy. This networking strategy makes enterprises change the basic concept of market competition, from non-cooperative game to non-zero-sum cooperative game. In practice, outsourcing, joint venture, franchising and R&D consortium are the application forms of this strategy. Within the enterprise, corporate governance has shifted from the traditional strengthening of enterprise ownership and operational control to the direction of property rights cooperation based on cooperation or partnership.
Among them, with the rapid development of economic globalization and technological progress, especially the convergence of technological functions, enterprises can't guarantee the long-term continuation of their competitive advantages by relying on integrated competitive strategies, so they have to think about cooperation strategies based on complementary resources under the impact of information and its network technology.
(2) In the traditional economic era, cooperative strategies also exist. The research of industrial organization shows that the cooperative behavior of enterprises in the market can bring excess profits to enterprises. The reality of market economy is the organizational behavior of complete monopoly competition, monopoly competition and oligopoly competition of enterprises except perfect competition. Only in the analysis paradigm of SCP, the final performance of enterprises in these organizational forms violates some market norms of capitalism and is regulated to varying degrees in different market economy countries.
Therefore, we know that the essence of network strategy is to ask enterprise strategists to rethink the new economic meaning of strategy. Under the new economy, the efficiency mechanism of enterprises in production input changes from diminishing returns to increasing returns, which directly leads to different strategic mechanisms for creating value. Interdependent relationship network is another basic form of enterprise resource allocation and the foundation of enterprise existence. The strategy of the enterprise has changed the resources and capabilities of the enterprise. Networking has the same influence on the internal organization and external competition of enterprises. Therefore, strategy is not the experience level of the previous enterprise strategic decision-making group, but the ability level of the enterprise and the imagination of the enterprise as an organism facing the future. The competition of enterprises has changed from the product competition in the terminal market to the competition between the core competitiveness of enterprises, and then the competition between enterprise networks. Regarding the competition between networks, the competition examples of knowledge-intensive high-tech enterprises in product standard formulation show that the property right cooperation between enterprises is very common, and enterprises, whether competitors or not, all form intricate alliance groups, which maintain the foundation of enterprise development with interdependent business ecosystems. This kind of competition is called alliance competition or "* * * co-evolution". This situation makes the strategy change from the action framework in traditional enterprise management to the role of asset ability, which leads to strategic innovation.
In view of the infinity of cyberspace information transmission and the effective influence of "openness" principle on organizational boundaries, the life cycle of enterprises will be shortened under the condition of strategic innovation, and the corresponding value creation mechanism will be transformed from continuity supported by past experience to discontinuity supported by backbone network imagination. In other words, the enterprise competition under the network condition becomes a kind of nonlinear competition, and the value of enterprise strategy implementation supply must be changed from linear competitive advantage to nonlinear competitive advantage. Therefore, the strategic innovation of enterprises is that under the network economy, the enterprise strategy enters the resource and capability library of enterprises with a nonlinear innovation system capability, rather than a general action framework.
Third, thinking about the strategic management of networked enterprises.
(A) The value creation mechanism of enterprise strategy is different under different economic forms. Driven by the progress of information technology, the traditional economy is changing in both economic practice and economic theory. This change is reflected in new economic forms such as network economy.
Under the traditional economy, the growth and development strategy of enterprises is essentially constrained by diminishing returns. Therefore, enterprise strategy is often a low-cost or differentiated-oriented competitive strategy. The pursuit of zero-sum game results in the market performance mainly lies in the scale advantage and scope advantage of the enterprise. Network economy as a new economic form. In essence, it embodies the law of rapid growth of economic theory research. Under this condition, the enterprise strategy presents a "competitive" network strategy driven by information technology and its network, that is, winning through cooperative competition and pursuing the competition result of non-zero-sum cooperative game, which becomes a systematic ability of enterprises in a nonlinear innovation way.
(2) The emergence of the network economy has had an extraordinary impact on the business activities of enterprises, which will greatly promote the business philosophy and mode of enterprises, not just the change and innovation of products. The existence of network economy shows that enterprises have to consider changing their previous competition concepts, changing from single competition to cooperative competition, and establishing the concept of winning competition based on cooperation. The formation of this concept comes from the blockade of material resources by information and its network, so the wide application of the network will inevitably break the traditional barriers to competition. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for enterprises.
Through the application of network, China's state-owned enterprises can reduce the competitive cost of entering the international market. Similarly, through extensive forms of cooperation, state-owned enterprises can also exist in domestic and foreign markets in the form of enterprise networks and compete in markets at all levels. But it is also because of the all-weather economy and the whole network economy.