突破学习边界:危机中海外客户参与的学习机制研究

面对高度不确定的国际市场环境,跨国企业亟需利用海外客户参与来实现知识汲取和学习转化,以加快对市场需求的理解与反馈。本文选取四家中国跨国企业进行多案例分析,探究环境不确定情境下中国跨国企业如何通过海外客户参与进行学习转化。研究发现,第一,企业对环境不确定性动态程度(突变程度和渐变程度)的感知分别来源于其自身的"资源约束"和"信息约束";第二,环境不确定性感知影响中国跨国企业海外客户参与策略的选择,包括动态参与和预期参与;第三,在海外客户参与过程中,企业可以通过将不同维度的学习(认知维度和行为维度)进行转化,以形成应对环境不确定性的快速响应机制。研究结果拓展了环境不确定性情境下客户参与理论在组织学习领域的应用,同时能够为中国跨国企业应对不确定性压力、制定科学的非市场策略提供有益的经验借鉴和理论指导。

Breaking the Learning Boundary: Learning Mechanism of Overseas Customer Participation in Crisis

With the increasingly significant uncertainty of the international market environment,the traditional learning path of multinational enterprises is blocked, and they begin to pay attention to the non-market behavior of customer participation. However, there is still not sufficient theoretical explanation for how to learn and transform in the process of overseas customer participation. Based on this, this study starts from the perspective of learning transformation, selects four Chinese enterprises for multi-case analysis, and explores the learning transformation mechanism of Chinese enterprises under the context of uncertain engagement. The results show that: Firstly, enterprises’ perception of the dynamic degree of environmental uncertainty(the degree of abrupt change and gradual change) comes from their own “resource constraints” and “information constraints” respectively. When the perception of sudden change degree is high, the perception source of enterprise environmental uncertainty mainly focuses on “information constraints”, which is reflected in the obstruction of information acquisition,resulting in the fuzziness of environmental prediction. When the perception of gradual change degree is high, the perception source of enterprise environmental uncertainty mainly focuses on “resource constraints”, which is subject to the impact of limited strategic capabilities and key resources, increasing the difficulty of timely response to environmental changes. Secondly, the perception of environmental uncertainty affects the choice of overseas customer participation strategies of Chinese multinational enterprises, including dynamic participation and expected participation. The participation of overseas customers with high dynamics and low expectations can increase non-productive activities, maintain good customer relations, and reduce information asymmetry through timely communication. The participation of overseas customers with low dynamics and high expectations is helpful to understand the market regularly, so as to alleviate resource constraints and respond to market changes in time.Thirdly, in the process of overseas customer participation, enterprises can learn from different dimensions(cognitive dimension and behavioral dimension) to form a quick response mechanism to deal with environmental uncertainty. The external learning transformation of cognitive dimension mainly aims at the uncertainty perception of enterprises caused by information constraints, focusing on the acquisition and absorption of external information, so as to reduce the problem of information asymmetry in the context of environmental uncertainty. The internal learning transformation of behavioral dimension mainly aims at the uncertainty perception of enterprises caused by their own resource constraints, focusing on the internal behavior change of the organization, so as to enhance the complementarity of resources. The cross-level learning transformation of cognitive dimension and behavior dimension needs multiple circular learning to expand the internal ability of the organization in the process of external information acquisition. The research results expand the application of customer participation theory in the field of organizational learning in the context of environmental uncertainty,and can provide useful experience and theoretical guidance for Chinese multinational enterprises to deal with the pressure of uncertainty and formulate scientific non-market strategies.