جهت گیری شرکت، جامعه عمل و ارتباطات فعال اینترنتی بین شرکتی: شواهدی از شرکت های چینی

What motivates firms to develop Internet-enabled interfirm communication? We draw upon the work of Alavi et al. (2005–2006) and propose that the use of the Internet in interfirm communication is influenced by a firm’s firm orientation and its internal communities of practice. Based on data collected from 307 international trade firms in the Beijing area, we find that Internet-enabled interfirm communication is directly driven by internal community of practices and customer orientation, and indirectly by competitor orientation and learning orientation. The internal community of practice is affected by learning orientation and competitor orientation, but not by customer orientation. The present study contributes to the literature by providing empirical investigation on firm’s strategic communications from the perspective of firm orientations, delineating how different firm orientations vary in impacting firm’s strategic communications, and exploring the bridging effect of communities of practices on the influences of firm orientations on knowledge management initiatives.

Because of the potential benefits of Internet technologies, firms have applied these technologies to conduct and support their business operations along the supply chain (Porter, 2001 and Swaminathan and Tayur, 2003). Previous studies have consistently shown that Internet technologies can help firms enhance customer relationships (Saaed et al., 2005), facilitate supply chain coordination (Malhotra et al., 2007 and Mishra et al., 2007), and streamline internal business processes (Swaminathan and Tayur, 2003). There is accumulating evidence about why firms deploy Internet technologies and the consequences of doing so. Zhu et al. (2006) observe that a group of environmental factors, technological factors, and organizational factors influence the initiation, adoption, and routinization of e-business. Regarding the consequences of Internet technologies, Barua et al. (2004) reveal that firms which digitalize their business activities with customers and suppliers using Internet technologies have superior financial performance. Various other studies investigate the positive effect of the Internet on firm performance (Swaminathan and Tayur, 2003). However, we know relatively less about how firm orientation influences the firm’s use of Internet-enabled communication with its supply chain partners. It is also important to understand how an internal community of practice (groups of professionals who informally share information amongst themselves – Brown and Duguid, 2000 and Wenger, 2000) may foster the development of a community of practice beyond the focal firm (Wasko and Faraj, 2000 and Zaheer and Bell, 2005). Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how firm orientation and an internal community of practice determine Internet-enabled interfirm communication along the supply chain. Our paper proceeds as follows. First, we review relevant literature. We then develop our theory and hypotheses outlining how the three firm orientations (learning, customer, and competitor) will drive Internet-enabled interfirm communication and the development of a community of practice internal to the firm. Next, we discuss our methods. We then turn to an examination of our results, followed by discussions of findings and the limitations thereof. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations for both scholars and practitioners.

There are several limitations to this study. First, we collected the data from a very special economy – the transitional economy in China – which differs from the market economy and developed countries (Peng and Heath, 1996). Previous studies have indicated that there are very special institutional and environmental features which might affect a firm’s business strategies and strategic choices in such economies (Peng, 2003). However, we did not capture such institutional and environmental factors. Second, the industry we investigated in this study was also special. Because international trading companies are the intermediaries of a country’s import and export business activities, their business strategies are also likely to be influenced by both domestic and foreign forces. The industry also faces various institutional, organizational, and environmental factors in the transitional process in China. Thus, we are cautious in generalizing the findings of this study to other industries and other countries. Third, we relied on a single data source in our data collection and did not use multiple survey respondents, primarily because of the high cost of using multiple information sources. Thus, the respondents might not have provided accurate responses to some of the survey questions. Finally, our method does not allow us to impute causality in our observed relationships. To overcome this limitation, we attempted to provide alternative explanations based on a possibility of causality other than that which we modeled.