Abstract
China's textile industry is facing a shortage of production factors such as labor force and the rapid rise of costs, as well as the dual pressure of the Chinese government's industrial restructuring policies and regulations to go to low-end traditional manufacturing industries, forcing Chinese textile enterprises to transfer to developing countries such as the Southeast Asia Peninsula, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, the Bangladesh China India Myanmar Channel, Central Asia, Africa, and a few developed countries (such as the United States).Previous studies on industrial transfer and competitive advantage were mostly at the meso level of the industry, and a few studies were conducted from the perspective of micro enterprises (Yang Jun, 2015). The purpose of the study was mainly the motivation, path and mode of the transfer. The results of the study were mostly a general concept, lacking research on the specific performance of micro enterprises in the process of capacity transfer (Ang, 2018), and could not explain the reasons Under the condition that the path and mode are basically the same, why do some transfer enterprises succeed, while others fail to exit. This paper focuses on the mainstream of China's textile enterprise transfer, taking developing countries as the undertaking country, and explores "how Chinese textile enterprises build competitive advantages in the process of capacity transfer".
Based on Porter's (1990) theory of industrial competitive advantage and the theory of mutual transformation and strengthening of comparative advantage and competitive advantage (Jinbei, 2003; Pei Changhong, 1998; Porter, 1990), this paper explores how Chinese textile production capacity transfer enterprises internalize the industrial competitive advantage of the undertaking country into the competitive advantage of enterprises. Based on the analysis of the source of competitive advantage of enterprises by the theory of enterprise resource view (Tan Liang, 2011; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997), this paper explores how the transferred enterprises can build new competitive advantages by optimizing the allocation of internal resources in the process of capacity transfer. This paper adopts the multi case study method to conduct an inductive exploration and analysis on how four case enterprises build competitive advantages in the process of capacity transfer.
The first innovation of this paper is that this paper has established a "theoretical model for enterprises to build competitive advantage in the process of capacity transfer", which enriches the theory of micro enterprise competitive strategy research in the context of industrial transfer. The theoretical model shows that in the process of capacity transfer, the factors that constitute the competitive advantage of transferred enterprises are a combination of multiple factors, including two aspects, six factors and six processes. The two aspects are the internalization of the external industrial environment of the undertaking country and the optimal allocation of internal resources of the transfer enterprise. Six factors are: the three external environmental factors of the undertaking country's resource endowment, industrial policies and demand conditions, and the three internal resource factors of the enterprise, namely business combination, innovation capability and management mode. The six processes include: employee training, global procurement and export Corporate social responsibility, vertical integration of the industrial chain, localization of employees and management, and sharing of organizational and knowledge resources. Through six intermediary or adjustment processes, the transferred enterprises have realized the internalization of the competitive advantage of the domestic industry and the optimal allocation of internal resources of the enterprises, and built the competitive advantage of the enterprises in the new industrial environment. The internalization of the competitive advantage of the transferred enterprises in the industries of the undertaking country and the optimal allocation of the internal resources of the enterprises are not independent processes, but organic synergies. The two together build the competitive advantage of Chinese textile enterprises in the process of capacity transfer.
Secondly, this paper expands the theoretical and practical boundary of Porter (1990), showing the theoretical variables and theoretical relationships that internalize the external industrial resource advantage into the enterprise competitive advantage. Third, this study enriched the theory of building enterprise competitive advantage based on resources, and explored how enterprises can build enterprise competitive advantage by optimizing the allocation of internal resources under the special scenario of capacity transfer. Fourthly, this paper reveals the internal mechanism that the comparative advantage of the textile industry of the undertaking country forms the industrial competitive advantage, and then internalizes the industrial competitive advantage into the enterprise competitive advantage through the subjective efforts of the enterprise.
The theoretical findings of this study not only have important practical significance for China's textile enterprises to successfully build competitive advantages in the process of capacity transfer, but also have theoretical expansion meaning for enterprises in other countries or regions that need to move outward due to the optimization and adjustment of industrial structure.