Implementing a Value Co-creation Network: Some Lessons from Taiwan's Steel Industry

This practitioner note is to combine transaction cost theory and the knowledge-based view of the firm to investigate why and how the hub company in a network coordinates its members to co-create value in the steel industry. A theoretical model was proposed. A qualitative case study based on original survey data in the context of Taiwan's steel industry. The analyses are based on different types of data: (1) direct observations, (2) semi-structured interviews, and (3) archived material. First, participant observation was employed since to analyze the organizational behavior and cooperation patterns among the members of the steel collaborative network. Second, we interviewed several managers, researchers, and scholars and kept records of all our data, and developed a list of codes to analyze the interviews' transcripts by using the constructs obtained by the primary theoretical framework. After coding, pattern-matching techniques and explanation building techniques were used for analyzing data across informers and matching the information in the theoretical framework. Pattern-matching technique can classify open-ended comments into generalized classifications and evaluate the prompted comments regarding a proposition. We compared the different cases by examining new classifications and responses. The explanation building facilitated a preliminary assessment of the presumed set of causal link to improve the tentative theoretical framework and help develop preliminary propositions. Except one new construct emerging, the findings suggest preliminary evidence that the network's value co-creation practices in steel collaborative network influenced by transaction cost factors and knowledge-based factors as theory argued. Two propositions are induced from the qualitative data. Proposition 1: The level of transaction cost factors perceived by ERC members is positively related to the degree of implementation of network's value co-creation practices in Taiwan's steel industry. Proposition 2: The level of knowledge-based factors perceived by ERC members positively related to the degree of implementation of network's value co-creation practices in Taiwan's steel industry. Theoretical implications contribute to strategic technology management research by providing a conceptual model for describing and assessing a steel collaborative network's implementing process for value co-creation by using a case approach. Researchers have begun exploring inter-organizational knowled