The Influence Of Guanxi And Organizational Learning On Contractors’ Sustainable Competitive Advantages

In the face of a complex and ever-changing market environment with fierce competition,how to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in the domestic contracting market is a key issue that our contractors should focus on.Based on their own cultural traditions,Chinese contractors are more inclined to use guanxi to obtain external resources and solve problems.The rapid development of the industry environment also makes contractors pay more and more attention to organizational learning.At the same time,the rational use of guanxi can improve the situation of limited internal resources of the contractor,improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational learning,and thus enhance the internal knowledge reserve and ability of the contractor,thereby promoting the maintenance of sustainable competitive advantage.Therefore,this study focuses on the analysis of the factors influencing the sustainable competitive advantage of contractors,and explores the impact of guanxi and organizational learning on the sustainable competitive advantage of contractors,and also combines the relationship between guanxi and organizational learning to explores how guanxi can influence the sustainable competitive advantage through organizational learning,providing strategic suggestions for Chinese contractors to maintain their dominant market position in the fierce market competition.This study uses a combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.In the qualitative analysis,the grounded theory research method is used to encode and analyze 9 interview cases,constituent elements of the contractor’s sustainable competitive advantage and the constituent stages of organizational learning are thoroughly explored,and guanxi is divided into four dimensions: xinren,renqing,mianzi and ganqing,thus the model of guanxi,organizational learning and sustainable competitive advantage is preliminarily constructed.Then,based on resource-based view,transaction cost theory,social exchange theory,resource dependence theory and organizational learning theory,corresponding research hypotheses are proposed.In the quantitative analysis,193 valid questionnaires were recovered,and the method of multiple linear regression was used to conduct an empirical study on the questionnaire data.The research results show that:(1)xinren,renqing and mianzi all have a significant positive impact on the contractor’s sustainable competitive advantage;(2)xinren,renqing and ganqing have a significant positive impact on the contractor’s organizational learning;(3)organization learning can significantly promote the realization of the sustainable competitive advantage of contractors;(4)organization learning has partial mediation effect in the impact of guanxi on the sustainable competitive advantage of contractors,specifically as xinren and renqing will positively affect the sustainable competitive advantage of contractors through the mediation effect of organizational learning.The contributions of this research are as follows: Firstly,it expands the connotation of guanxi,organizational learning,and sustainable competitive advantage of contractors,and enriches the application of the three variables in the construction industry.Secondly,it supplements the research on the relationship between guanxi and sustainable competitive advantage.Thirdly,it has enriched the research on the influencing factors of sustainable competitive advantage and comprehensively considered the influence path of guanxi and organizational learning on the sustainable competitive advantage of contractors.Fourthly,the combination of qualitative analysis and empirical research provides a methodological reference for subsequent research in the engineering field.