网络行为组态与闭环承载构型:DMNEs国际创业机会叠加发展的事件路径分析

Network Behavior Configuration and International Entrepreneurial Opportunity:A Qualitative Process Re-search Based on the Key Event-Path Analysis

中国市场潜力巨大,吸引了大量发达国家跨国企业寻求国际创业机会发展。这些企业既可以模仿已有业务发展复制机会,也需要开辟新的产品—市场领域发展创新机会。然而,现有研究忽视了复制机会与创新机会叠加发展的非线性创业过程,缺乏关于企业如何应对机会叠加发展中复杂网络连带的讨论。本文采用关键事件路径分析方法,抽取一家典型企业的相关事件,探索承载创业机会叠加发展的网络行为组态构型。研究结果表明,跨国企业以连带利用或连带改变为主轴,形成“改变—建立—利用”网络行为的闭环构型,承载复制机会与创新机会的结合发展;连带维系同时支撑连带利用与连带改变,确保网络行为闭环稳定加速,承载复制机会与创新机会融合发展。本研究结论对创业机会发展及网络行为相关研究做出了理论贡献,也对具备一定优势的跨国企业如何在东道国开发创业机会具有启发意义。

China’s huge market potential has attracted a large number of developed market multinational enterprises(DMNEs).These enterprises can either replicate the existing businesses to develop imitative opportunities and break new segments of the product-market to develop innovative opportunities.To sustain growth in the fast-changing Chinese market,DMNES must overlap the development of imitative opportunities and innovative opportunities to avoid the risks associated with fragmentation.Network ties provide important support for the development of international entrepreneurial opportunities,and as the overlapping development of imitative and innovative opportunities continues to deepen,how to deal with the complex network ties generated by the overlap of the two be-comes the key for DMNEs to gain a firm foothold and sustained momentum in the Chinese market.However,existing studies have neglected the nonlinear entrepreneurial process of the overlapping development of imitative and innovative opportunities,and lacked discussions on how firms cope with the complex network ties in the overlapping development of entrepreneurial opportunities.To explore the topic of DMNEs’overlapping development of international entrepreneurial opportunities,this paper selects the quali-tative process study that focuses on how and why things emerge,develop,grow,or terminate over time.To better distill illuminating process patterns,we adopt an event path analysis approach,extracting relevant events from a typical firm,and exploring the patterns of network behavior configurations that carry the overlapping development of entrepreneurial opportunity by analyzing its dynamic management of network ties,i.e.,the implementation of establishing,changing,utilizing,and maintaining behaviors that change the state and content of the network ties.In this study,we found that DMNEs take the main axis of ties utilization or ties change to form the“changing-building-utilization”network behavior closed-loop pattern,which carries the combined development of replication opportunities and innovation opportunities;The integrated development of imitative opportunity and innovative opportunities needs ties maintenance to support both ties utilization and ties changing to ensure the stable acceleration of the behavior closed-loop.Compared with previous literature,this paper expands on the following two aspects.First,based on the scenario of DMNEs develop-ing international entrepreneurial opportunities in the Chinese market,this paper reveals the process law of the overlapping develop-ment of imitative opportunities and innovative opportunities from fragmentation to combination and integration,which responds to the call for exploring the nonlinear characteristics of the entrepreneurial process.Secondly,existing studies have regarded network behaviors in the process of international entrepreneurial opportunities as independent entities,highlighting the specific roles played by different network behaviors,and neglecting the interaction paths among network behaviors and the grouping patterns they form.This study effectively extends the cutting-edge idea of network behavior combination by dissecting the network behavior patterns that carry the overlapping development of opportunity.This study can provide three insights for multinational enterprises to develop international entrepreneurial opportunity practices in host countries.First,multinational enterprises need to effectively overlay the development of imitative opportunities with the devel-opment of innovative opportunities,so that the two can form a mutually supportive and transformative situation,to truly integrate into and even lead the development of the host country’s market.Secondly,in the process of overlapping development of imitative opportunities and innovative opportunities,multinationals need to pay attention to the construction of“changing-building-utilization”network behavior closed loop,to solve the challenges of complex network ties.Finally,in the training process of closed loop of net-work behaviors,multinational enterprises must fully integrate into the environment and age,and build a relational field that can bring together multiple network ties,to ensure that they can continue to generate new international entrepreneurial opportunities in the host market.