Literature Review

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of the related literature on inter-organizational collaboration, as well as the influencing environments that are e-business diffusion, organizational capacities and trust. In fact, these influencing factors and attributes are not really isolated but, rather, are interrelated. Via a brief review of collaboration literature, a few empirical studies exist, which have investigated the effect of collaboration on business performance, and the role of e-business diffusion posted in their trusted relationship. The chapter concludes that there is a gap in the literature dealing with the effect of collaboration on business performance, taking e-business diffusion and trust into consideration.

Discussion and Research Innovation and Management Enlightenment

This section would conclude the main finding, management enlightenment, theoretical and practical contributions of the study and limitation of this research. This research developed and tested a model of collaboration and provides profound analysis of the inter-organizational collaboration and its influencing factors from trust, organizational capacities and e-business diffusion. This research pointed out that trust facilitates collaboration and results in a high business performance, e-business diffusion has no significant effect on the output of collaboration and it should be accompanied with a high level of organizational capacities. Enhanced collaboration network or e-collaboration network is a valuable perspective for electrical industry and also for other globalized industries.

Data Analysis and Validation of the Model

The purpose of this chapter is to present in detail the method and processes of the data analysis, and the results obtained from the analysis. Structured Equation Modelling (SEM) is adopted to test the hypotheses testing and mediators testing. This chapter also includes sample characteristics, descriptive analysis of the demographic profile of the respondents and descriptive statistics of the e-collaboration technologies. The testing of the measurement model covers tests of content validity, convergent validity, discriminate validity and reliability. The final research model results show all hypotheses have been accepted excepting Hypothesis 4. Collaboration' plays a full mediation effect on Trust and Business Performance. E-business diffusion is also a full mediation for this linked relationship. The results are reasonable according to the manufacturing e-business practices in Wenzhou.

Brief Introduction of Wenzhou Electrical Industry Cluster

The development of the electrical industry in Wenzhou is a sound research area for its size, industrial cluster, culture, globalization history, collaboration traditional in business, and political preferences. ‘Grouping' is a special atmosphere of collaboration in Wenzhou business model quite different from the atmosphere of competition in other industries. Wenzhou electrical industry cluster is challenged by several uncertainties in its rapid development. A brief analysis of SWOT will give a clear picture. The study of the lifecycle analysis of industrial cluster as well as their relationship with the collaboration performance and competitiveness helps the understanding of the unique values of the research in Wenzhou area.

The Research Model

The purpose of this chapter is to draw upon the findings from previous literature review on e-business diffusion and collaboration, together with the theories of Trust and organizational capacities. The related theories are DOI theory and Trust theory, while trust, organizational capacity, collaboration, diffusion of e-business and business performance are regarded as the five ‘constructs' of the theoretical framework. The research theoretical framework consists of six hypotheses emerging from the interrelationships. Relationships between research question, research objectives and hypotheses are clearly established. The mediation effect of e-business diffusion between the relationship of collaboration and business performance also would be examined as the main research question.

Introduction

The explosion of the Internet and other telecommunication technology facilitates the interaction between trading partners using wireless communications. E-collaboration considerably facilitates inter-organisational sharing of knowledge and information and subsequently improves business performance. The level of wireless technology used to manage commercial transactions between partners is regarded as the ‘e-commerce diffusion'. Effective information sharing among trading partners heavily depends on trust outside organization and organisational capacity inside organization, which form two critical factors to successful inter-organisational collaboration. The research question cannot be answered without thorough investigation of the impact of e-collaboration and e-commerce diffusion on business performance as practiced by industry. The survey was addressed to CEOs and senior managers from 500 organisations in China manufacturing electrical products. This chapter give an overview of the key definitions, research questions, research methodology, research significance and limitations of scope of the book.

Revised Attributes

This chapter is conducted with the intention to investigate the relevancy of the attributes to the five constructs of the model. The discussion in this section is basing on the information and the key findings according to the content of these interviews six pilot studies and the open question' respondents collected from 395 questionnaires survey and other government and Industry Association documents. The revised attributes of trust is based on contractual trust, competence trust, goodwill trust and benevolence. Relationship management, learning capability, communication capability and innovation capability are selected as the main attributes of the organizational capacities in relation to inter-organizational collaboration. The five typical attributes in the DOI theory are selected for measuring e-business diffusion, which are: relative advantage, complexity, trialability and observability. Organizational effectiveness, product and service measure, financial measures, market measure and customer satisfaction measure are mainly perceived as business performance measures.

Pilot Study Findings

This research started our research methodology with pilot study because this type of the study is exploratory in nature and helps researchers to explore related indicators for the research constructs and improve adequacy of the research questionnaire for the empirical study. Perceptions extracted from the electrical organizations are valuable in validating the questionnaire according to the context of the Wenzhou electrical industry. They are DG, HG, JEA, ZG, ZE and QE, which are recommended by the WSMEA according to its reputation and achievements in the globalization, inter-organizational collaboration and e-business adoption. The face-to-face interviews with organizations' managers were conducted with the period of March 2010 to January 2011. The discussion will focus on three perspectives: challenges from the innovation inside the organizational capacities for collaboration, the drivers and barriers to trust in the industry, as well as from e-business diffusion.

The Recognization of Collaboration

With the phenomenon of information acquisitions and sharing, this section aims to drawn from experiences of collaboration for intellectual contributions. Especially in the recent global economic meltdown, there is increased complexity about how to optimize business resources on a worldwide scale. Hence, the role collaboration plays in business management is not only to facilitate information sharing but more importantly, to enhance business performance. This chapter reviews the current literature in the fields of collaboration, as well as the interaction between collaboration and business performance in the area of Wenzhou. Moreover, influences from political, legal, business forces, cultural, psycho-social and technology development would also affect the performance of collaboration. A detailed discussion of the importance of the trust underpinning inter-organizational collaboration is included from the psycho-social perspective. Currently, a research gap exists in the examination of the relationships between collaboration and business performance via diffusing e-business in this industry.

Research Methodology

This chapter will describe the philosophical assumptions and research methods for assessing the hypotheses and structural model discussed in Chapter 5.The research paradigms and research design show this research will combine the advantages from both the qualitative and quantitative methods. Pilot study for six cases interview is the main qualitative research method and surveys as the main quantitative method are used. This research mainly focuses on the exploratory, descriptive and explanatory research methodologies. Qualitative research design, the sample selection procedure and administration of the interviews also is also designed for the validation of this research. Pilot study's objectives and questions, sample selection procedure, administration of the interview will be displayed. The quantitative research design concerns population and sample, research design for the quantitative method, ethics approval, measurement instrument and methods of data analysis techniques (Structural Equation Modelling).