| Summary: | 博士 === 國立政治大學 === 企業管理學系 === 88 === Thesis Abstract
Multinational corporations (MNCs) of American and European countries have outsourced the manufacturing service from Taiwan firms, especially in the information and electronics industries.. The division of labor in the manufacturing / marketing value-chain not only strengthened the competitiveness of the MNC, but also developed and upgraded Taiwan firms’ capability in the field of process technology, product design and international marketing activities. Such a phenomenon has aroused academic interests and invited a growing body of research papers.
However, those studies adopted foreign direct investment (FDI) theory to explain MNCs’ outsourcing behavior, and most have taken the viewpoint of MNCs. Although international product life cycle theory, transaction cost analysis (TCA) and internationalization stage theory were instrumental to understand the motives and outcomes of cross-border strategic alliances, yet they rarely looked deeply into hardly and cast little light on the globalization behavior of Taiwan firms or others like Korea, Singapore, and so on. In terms of the macro-economic activities, Taiwan firms’ subcontracting services for MNCs can be treated as cross-national division-of-labor of a particular industry, both parties focused on different roles and functions along the industry value activities chain. On the other hand, from Taiwan firms’ viewpoints, it is concerned with the make-or-buy decision of marketing efforts.
Firstly, This paper also takes the stand of TCA to study the impact of asset specificity and transaction uncertainty on Taiwan firms involvement in the cross-border manufacturing-marketing value activities chain. Basically, this is duplication of TCA, however, it is a systematic examination of TCA validity in the Taiwan industry context. Secondly, this paper brings technology factors into the analytic framework, namely, to investigate the influence of technology on the division-of-labor mode between MNCs and Taiwan firms. As we can see, the technology factors can be analyzed form two different levels, which include industry technologic characteristics and firms’ own technologic capabilities. Finally, this paper examine any possible interaction between attributes of transaction cost and technology factors.
The sampling frame was composed of Taiwan firms in information and electronics industry. The questionnaires have been sent to the managers of sales department or manufacturing. The returned questionnaires were analyzed by suitable statistical methods. The statistical analysis results showed that asset specificity could influenced the firms’ choice of industrial division-of-labor mode, but uncertainty wouldn’t affect the firms’ choice. Besides, industrial technological characteristics and firms’ technologic capabilities had significant impact on firms’ choice to enter industrial division-of-labor mode.
The main contribution of this study is to complement TCA explanation in industrial division-of-labor mode, especially dealing with the influence of technology on the coordination of economic activities in a certain industry. The primarily data and analysis result supported the influence of technology was semi-strong form, rather than semi-weak form or weak-form, as Williamson argued.
Finally, this paper provides some suggestions on theoretical implication, managerial application and further research direction.
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