商业生态系统隐喻的价值与局限性

由于商业世界中企业之间的关系以及各企业处理关系的方法与自然生态系统中的生物体很相似,以商业生态系统隐喻来研究商业网络和企业的战略与管理,运用生态学理论以及科学方法研究商业问题,有助于把握商业社会的本质。商业生态系统理论能够超越供应链和战略联盟管理,深化企业之间共生共进的研究,为产业组织分析提供了新的理论框架,为企业集群研究提供了新的研究视角,为企业制定竞争战略和发展战略提供了新的思路。但是,商业生态系统与自然生态系统在基本属性、自组织、复杂性及健康标准方面均存在差别,因此,商业生态系统隐喻也具有局限性。全面了解商业生态系统隐喻的价值和局限性,不仅有利于管理理论的发展,而且有利于企业更恰当地认识自身所处的商业环境,制定更为有效的战略,既实现自身的发展目标,也推进整个商业社会的和谐与共进。

The Value and limitations of Business Ecosystem Metaphor

The relationship between enterprises and the ways enterprises handle the relationship are analogous to the organisms in the natural ecosystem.It follows that applying the theories and methods in ecology to the study of business network,corporate strategy and management and other business problems could shed light on our understanding of the nature of the business world.Business ecosystem theory goes beyond the supply chain management and the strategic alliance management and could deepen our understanding of the symbiotic relationship between enterprises,thus,providing a new theoretical framework for the analysis of industrial organization and a new perspective for research on enterprise clustering.However,limitations with the business ecosystem metaphor stem from the differences between the natural ecosystem and the business ecosystem in their basic properties,self-organizations,complexity and health standards.A comprehensive study of the values and limitations of the metaphor not only contributes to the development of management theory but also helps the enterprises to understand their business environment which,in turn,will enable them to work out better strategy to realize their objectives as well as to promote the harmonic co-evolution of the overall business community.