Doctoral Dissertation Research in Sociology: Business Group Structure and the Dynamics of Firm Performance in the People's Republic of China

9633121 Nee在过去的二十年里，中国公司开展业务的方式发生了根本性的变化。企业越来越独立于中央权威，并在此过程中开始以前所未有的速度增长。然而，中国企业并不是作为孤立的经济实体开展业务。相反，他们正在加入商业团体，并在这些公司间网络中开展业务。研究人员已经记录了组织环境在决定企业行为和结果方面的核心作用，但没有系统的努力来记录组织间网络对企业行为和绩效的影响。本研究将提供中国新兴商业集团的结构，并记录其对成员公司绩效的影响。在此过程中，本研究还将为关于企业间网络在构建单个企业的行为和绩效方面所起作用的更一般的理论讨论提供信息。随着中国企业不断扩张并在国际上扮演越来越重要的角色，本文的研究对国内外的管理者和政策制定者也有启示意义。本研究将采用定量面板数据、40家最大的中国商业集团及其522家成员公司的财务和网络数据，以及对更广泛数据集中包含的6家集团的定性案例研究数据。动态的、多层次的定量数据将有助于使用社会网络分析技术来描述群体结构和层次回归分析来检验结构对企业行为和绩效的影响。本建议的资助将有助收集第二波定量数据（包括所有网络数据）及个案研究数据。＊＊＊

9633121 Nee The way in which firms in the People's Republic of China conduct business has been fundamentally altered in the past two decades. Firms have gained increasing independence from central authority and, in the process, have begun to grow at unprecedented rates. Chinese firms are not, however, conducting business as isolated economic entities. Rather they are joining business groups and conducting business from within these interfirm networks. Researchers have documented the central role organizational environments play in determining firm behavior and outcomes, but no systematic effort has been made to document the impact interorganizational networks have on firm behavior and performance. The proposed research will provide an account of the structure of the emergent Chinese business groups and document their impact on the performance of member firms. In the process, this research will also inform more general theoretical discussions about the role interfirm networks play in structuring the behavior and performance of individual firms. The proposed research also has implications for mangers and policy makers both in China and abroad as China's firms continue to expand and play an increasingly important international role. This research will employ quantitative panel data, financial and network data on the 40 largest Chinese business groups and their 522 member firms, as well as qualitative case study data on six of the groups included in the broader data set. The dynamic, multi-level quantitative data will facilitate the use of the techniques of social network analysis to describe the structure of the groups and hierarchial regression analysis to test the effects the structure has on firm behavior and performance. The funding of this proposal will facilitate the collection of the second wave of the quantitative data (including all network data) as well as the case study data. ***