Research On Knowledge Base Of Dominant Enterprise And Its Impact On Platform Ecosystem Health

With the development of emerging technologies,such as the Internet,mobile communications and big data,products and technologies in many industries,especially high-tech ones,have become more and more high-end and sophisticated.It is difficult for one company to complete all the productive chains,and cooperation between several companies is needed.In these industries,products are often composed of multiple product modules or components,and each enterprise is responsible for one or several of these modules.Finally,the enterprise which plays a leading role or leads the cooperation will integrate these modules according to the product architecture and form the final product.This business model is the platform model.The dominant enterprise provides a platform,which contains platform architecture,cooperation rules,interfaces,etc.,while the complementary enterprise providing complementary modules,and cooperates with the dominant enterprise through this platform.The member enterprises of these two roles jointly constitute the business organization of platform ecosystem.Under this background,it is difficult for a single enterprise to obtain and maintain long-term competitive advantage by fighting alone.With the development of platform mode,platform economy has become a popular trend,and the competition among enterprises has gradually transformed into the competition among platform ecosystems.Such practical developments have given rise to a lot of research on platform ecosystems.Most scholars adopt the case study method and a small amount adopt big data empirical method to study platform leadership,platform governance,platform competition,etc.These literatures provide a good idea and foundation for the followup researches,but most of them are on the platform or the member level,and few study the platform ecosystem as a whole.As an emerging complex business organization,the platform ecosystem has many management and operation characteristics different from that of a single enterprise.Therefore,this paper adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to carry out research on platform ecosystem.Specific research contents and conclusions are as follows.Firstly,the grounded theory is used as a qualitative research method.Based on indepth interviews with more than 20 middle and senior managers from dominant enterprises and complementary enterprises and analysis of a large number of secondary data,the concept of platform ecosystem health is proposed and its connotation is defined with reference to relevant literature,so as to measure the operation and development status of the platform ecosystem.Then strictly follow the scale development process to develop a scale to measure the platform ecosystem health.Through the three coding processes of grounded theory method,four component dimensions of platform ecosystem health are obtained,namely partnership,innovation,robustness and financial performance,as well as the measurement items of each dimension.Through exploratory factor analysis based on 159 questionnaire data and confirmatory factor analysis based on 165 questionnaire data and reliability and validity tests,a measurement scale with good reliability and validity of 15 items in four dimensions is obtained,which is used for subsequent empirical research.Secondly,combining the knowledge base theory with the platform theory,this paper explores the direct impact of the knowledge base of dominant enterprise on the platform ecosystem health.Knowledge base is divided into two dimensions: knowledge breadth and knowledge depth,which have direct effects on the four dimensions of platform ecosystem health respectively,and the corresponding hypotheses are put forward.Through the test of hierarchical regression method based on 321 questionnaire data,it is found that the knowledge breadth of the dominant enterprise has a significant positive impact on the two dimensions of platform ecosystem health: partnership and robustness;The knowledge depth of the dominant enterprise has a significant positive impact on the three dimensions of platform ecosystem health: partnership,innovation and robustness.Thirdly,combining the knowledge base theory,dynamic capability theory and platform theory,this paper explores the mediating mechanism of opportunity recognition between the influences of the dominant enterprise’s knowledge base on the platform ecosystem health.Based on 321 questionnaire data and SEM,Amos,Boostrap,which are more suitable for testing the mediating effect,the test process proposed by Preacher and Hayes(2004)and Zhao et al.(2010)is adopted to test the mediating effect of market opportunity identification and technological opportunity identification.The results show that market opportunity identification plays a fully mediating role in the relationship between knowledge breadth and partnership,robustness and financial performance,while there is no mediating role in the relationship between knowledge breadth and innovation;Technological opportunity identification plays a partial mediating role in the influence of knowledge depth on partnership,and a complete mediating role in the influence path of knowledge depth on innovation,robustness and financial performance.Fourth,explore the moderating effect of environmental turbulence.In view of the important role of dominant enterprise’s opportunity identification,this paper examines the moderating effect of environmental turbulence on the relationship between dominant enterprise’s knowledge base and opportunity identification.It is found that market turbulence has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between knowledge breadth and market opportunity identification;Technological turbulence negatively moderates the influence of knowledge depth on technology opportunity identification,and the influence of knowledge depth on technology opportunity identification of dominant enterprise is different under different degrees of technological turbulence.Under the background of the rapid development of platform economy,this study combined platform theory,knowledge base theory and dynamic capability theory to explore the influence mechanism and path of dominant enterprise’s knowledge base on platform ecosystem health.The concept and connotation definition of platform ecosystem health and the development of measurement scale provide a measurement tool for member enterprises to understand platform ecosystem health and a measurement basis for subsequent empirical research,which enriches the platform theory and health research.The research on the influence of the knowledge base of dominant enterprises on platform ecosystem health expands the research context of the knowledge base theory and increases the perspective of improving the health of platform ecosystem.The study on the mediating role of opportunity identification of dominant enterprise provides a new theoretical path for platform ecosystem governance issues,such as improving health,and enriches the application context of dynamic capability theory.The study on the moderating effect of environmental turbulence provides a reference for dominant enterprises to identify opportunities in different situations.