互聯網 + 背景下大宗商品行業的平台激勵機制選擇與績效提升研究：基於中崇集團旳實証研究

Abstract

“Internet+” is a new and popular economic form currently. The integration of the Internet and traditional industries has risen to the national strategic level. The platform transformation of the bulk commodity industry belongs to a typical “Internet+” practice. How to embrace the opportunities brought by the “Internet+” economy, enhance the competitiveness of the traditional enterprise through the platform strategy and the corresponding platform incentive mechanism, and respond to increasingly challenges of fierce competition, become pressing problems.

The co-evolution theory, has analyzed the process of interaction and co-evolution between industry clusters and networks in the context of traditional industries. Based on these researches, this paper applies co-evolution theory to explore the formation and evolution of platform strategies in the context of the “Internet+”. The focus of this paper is to analyze the platform incentive mechanism for the brokers on the platform and the co-evolving mechanism and path of other entities. This study aims to have implications for the application and extension of the co-evolution theory in the transformation of traditional enterprises in the process of internetization in emerging or transitional economies.

This paper takes a representative enterprise in the bulk commodity industry as the research object. Based on the perspective of co-evolution, we attempt to build a dynamic process model for the formation and evolution of platform strategies, especially the incentive mechanism of the platform, to open the "black box" of core competitiveness in the context of the “Internet+”. This paper aims to answer three research questions: (1) How does the platform strategy (especially the platform incentive mechanism) of the bulk commodity industry co-evolve with the institutional environment and industry trends? (2) In the process of the co-evolution, how does path innovation of the incentive mechanism of the platform be reflected (centered on value creation)? (3) From the perspective of psychological contract, how can platform companies improve employee performance through incentive mechanism innovation to achieve firm performance goals?

In order to study these questions, this paper includes two studies. Study I adopted the method of single case study. Taking the development history of Zhongchong Group as an example, it analyzed the platform strategy and platform incentive mechanism of the bulk commodity industry, the co-evolution process with the industry and environment, and the path innovation in the process. The further analysis of the path of evolution shows how the large commodity company integrates various stakeholders through the design of platform incentive systems to achieve the purpose of resource integration. Study 2 used a survey method and took the broker incentive mechanism of Zhongchong Platform as an example. From the perspective of psychological contract, it studies how the platform's benefit-sharing model plays an incentive role and explores the interaction mechanism between the platform and stakeholders. Study 1 provided a background of business environment for innovation and change of incentive mechanism for Study 2. Study 2 provided the cornerstones and tools for testing the results of Study 1. The two studies complemented each other and verified each other. The co-evolution model of incentive mechanisms has laid a solid empirical foundation for the proposed model at the end of this paper.

Date of Award	4 Feb 2019
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Yanzhi David LI (Supervisor) & Jiming BAO (External Supervisor)