The Impact Mechanism Of Network Embeddedness On Tourism Supply Chain Integration

Aiming at the phenomenon of frequent information exchange and resource cooperation among tourism enterprises in China,this paper focuses on the resource integration and related embeddedness problems among tourism enterprises in the tourism supply chain.Driven by information technology,the operation mode of tourism enterprises gradually presents the characteristics of informatization and networking.Whether it is a loose network business model(such as strategic alliance,travel agency virtual enterprise and travel agency consortium)or a close network business model(travel agency enterprise group and quasi integration model between travel agencies),the effective integration of resources has become one of the effective ways for tourism enterprises to build competitive advantage.Therefore,the research on the phenomenon of resource integration in the network operation of tourism enterprises has become critial.In addition,the network operation mode makes tourism enterprises embedded in multiple relationship networks.How to reasonably choose the embedding degree in the network is a research problem that should be paid more attention to.Although the positive effect of embeddedness has been widely verified by scholars and has attracted the attention of scholars.However,scholars represented by Uzzi also found the actual existence of the embedding paradox and reminded the academia to be vigilant against the embedding trap.The existing research provides important enlightenment for us to explore the problem of resource integration in the perspective of network embeddedness.Besides,the contradictory issues were widely existed and concerned in economics and management,such as individual rationality and collective rationality,maximization of individual interests and collective interests,cost-benefit balance,independent R &D and cooperative innovation,short-term interests and long-term interests,etc.Those paradoxical questions need to be examined in the comprehensive perspective combining both positive and negative effects of embeddedness.Although the positive effect of embeddedness has been widely verified by scholars,and has attracted academic attention to the importance of embeddedness when facing economic/managerial problems.However,scholars represented by Uzzi have also found the actual existence of the embedding paradox,suggesting that the embedding trap should be vigilant against in academia.For firms in tourism industry,network embeddedness is the primary problem to be concerned to solve the problems of sustainable development,collaborative green innovation and upgrading of industrial structure.At present,the academic research on embeddedness is gradually increasing and thriving.Embeddedness theory is combined with strategic alliance theory,organization theory,innovation theory and resource theory,and began to be applied to the organization management area.Although it can be effectively interpreted in the analysis of economic behavior mechanisms such as enterprise decision-making,resource investment,knowledge management and cooperative innovation.However,the current researches are mainly belonging to the construction of macro theory,lack of studies on the interpretation of symptomatic micro mechanism.Therefore,this study focused on the characterization of network embeddedness structure attributes of tourism enterprises,hoping to make the certain theoretical contribution and practical guidance.Based on network resource theory,social network theory,evolutionary game theory and supply chain integration theory,this paper constructed mathematical model and combined computational singular perturbation method,exploratory factor analysis and social network analysis(SNA)to deduce and test the conceptual model.This paper focused on the dynamic evolution of actor’s resource decision-making,the loss of resource efficiency,network structure characteristics and the influential relationships between firm’s key structural indicators of embeddedness and resource integration in tourism supply chain.The main conclusions and findings of this paper include:(1)During the evolution of resource strategies among actors,it is found that it is difficult to evolve to an ideal state of resource cooperation without supervision,except for meeting the resource boundary conditions of system evolution in two-party and three party game.Dominant factor hindering the choice of cooperative strategy in the game is transaction cost,and the dominant factor promoting the achievement of cooperative strategy is cooperative benefit.The positive affect of network embeddedness is proved under the information supervision mechanism.Then,this paper brings low-embedded stakeholders into the four-party game.It is found that: first,the cooperative evolution of the system needs to be vigilant against the "decoupling" risk of other stakeholders(a low-embedded marginal cluster).Second,it is clear that the strategy driving factor of the three core game players is the cooperative benefit.For other stakeholders,the first concern is the information benefit,followed by the cooperative benefit.Third,improving the extent of embeddedness will positively promote and accelerate the achievement of cooperative decisions,and the dominant interests will change from early information benefits to later cooperation benefits and remain stable.Fourth,keeping improving the embedding degree,the negative effect caused by over-embeddedness is captured,and it theoretically demonstrates the existence of embedding paradox.It is proved that in the equilibrium region of ideal cooperation,the dominant interest is cooperative benefit,while in the non-cooperative region,information benefit occupies the dominant position.(2)When analyzing the resource efficiency under the embeddedness mechanism,it is found that the resource loss rate is inversely proportional to the investment of social capital and special assets,and the efficiency loss caused by excessive embeddedness will also hinder the resource investment behavior of actors.In addition,the embedding degree and embedding loss rate of leaders and followers show a negative relationship,that is,the greater the embedding loss rate,the actors will reduce their own extent of network embeddedness and reduce social capital investment.(3)In the empirical study of embeddedness and tourism supply chain integration,it is found that the degree centrality and structural hole dimension in positional embeddedness play the positive role in promoting tourism supplier integration.Previous studies have affirmed the advantages of network core/central position for information acquisition,but there is still a lack of research on the impact of various dimensions of positional embeddedness on resource integration ability.Based on previous studies,this paper verifies that the centrality and intermediary of network position are the main positional attributes to build information advantage.In the verification of the model of structural embeddedness and tourism supply chain integration,it is found that the interconnection,structural equivalence and structural autonomy of structural embeddedness actively promote the integration of tourism suppliers,and the structural autonomy of structural embeddedness actively promote the integration of tourism customers.The results provide reference for the operation strategy of tourism enterprises.To a certain extent,the findings in this study improved and expanded the antecedent research system of tourism supply chain integration,strengthened the theoretical depth,and had a certain reference significance for the extension of subsequent related theories.Combined with the characteristics of the tourism industry,this paper designs mix research methods to simulate the real operation situation in order to make a theoretical demonstration for the sustainable development of the tourism industry and to provide some guidance for the strategy designation of tourism enterprises.