Exploring the Paths for Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises to Control the Core Activities of Global Value Chain:A Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis
In an era of de-globalization underpinned by a technological cold war,developed countries,led by the United States,are increasingly intervening in global supply chains.This directly undermines the fundamental assumption in international business of a positive interdependence between nations and firms.The abrupt changes in the global economic governance system have significantly heightened the risks associated with the international operations of Chinese enterprises.Chinese firms must accelerate their transformative upgrades to become innovation leaders in their industries,shifting from being governed to governing by controlling core activities in the Global Value Chain(GVC).Existing research has noted that firms from emerging economies,represented by Chinese enterprises,are no longer confined to simple manufacturing tasks but are expanding into core GVC activities such as R&D and marketing,becoming key players in global value chains.Researchers emphasize that Emerging Market Firms(EMFs)need to develop capabilities to engage in core GVC activities to achieve transformative upgrades.However,few studies have deeply explored how firms with different capability endowments achieve control over core GVC activities.This paper uses a sample of 240 Chinese manufacturing enterprises to explore the configurational effects of controlling core GVC activities,based on the"Linkage-Leverage-Learning"(LLL)theory,organizational learning theory,and core competency theory.It examines this from three perspectives:outward foreign direct investment(OFDI),innovation advantages,and core competencies.The configurational analysis results indicate,first,that Chinese manufacturing enterprises exhibit a"multiple concurrency"characteristic in controlling core GVC activities.Seven factors—OFDI experience,innovative culture,learning capability,manufacturing capability,R&D capability,marketing capability,and supply chain capability—form four models of antecedent configurations for controlling core GVC activities:(1)The"dual innovation-driven type,"which can lead to controlling GVC entry.(2)The"R&D advantage-driven type,"which can lead to controlling core technology.(3)The"R&D efficiency synergy type,"which can lead to controlling market activities.(4)The"global resource-driven type,"which can lead to controlling global production decisions.Secondly,no single antecedent variable constitutes a necessary condition for controlling core GVC activities.However,enhancing learning capability and R&D capability plays a relatively universal role in this process for Chinese enterprises.Finally,controlling core GVC activities exhibits a"different paths leading to the same destination"characteristic,indicating that Chinese enterprises need to systematically assess their own resources and capabilities and choose the most feasible breakthrough path according to their actual situation.Compared to previous studies,this paper may offer the following contributions:first,it integrates multiple perspectives from the LLL theory,organizational learning theory,and core competency theory to analyze the four types of core GVC activity control,incorporating OFDI,innovation advantages,and core competencies into the analytical framework.It explores the driving mechanisms of multiple factor combinations on Chinese manufacturing enterprises'control over core GVC activities.Existing studies mainly use qualitative research methods to investigate the antecedents of Chinese enterprises'control over different GVC activities from the perspective of acquiring key strategic assets and enhancing core competencies.This paper further refines the capability resource endowments of enterprises and uses qualitative comparative analysis to explore the heterogeneous coupling effects between different sub-dimensions of OFDI,innovation advantages,and core competencies on controlling different types of core GVC activities,thereby expanding the current GVC literature on core activities.Second,from the perspective of the coupling of"OFDI—innovation advantages—core competencies,"this paper finds that no single factor can successfully drive the control of core GVC activities.It identifies seven antecedent configurations under different combinations of conditions for controlling core GVC activities.This,to some extent,addresses the dilemma where a single perspective cannot fully explain the varied impacts of micro-level factors on firm upgrading and promotes a shift in causal logic research on firm upgrading towards a multi-dimensional interactive overall perspective.
control the core activities of GVCleapfrog upgradequalitative comparative analysis(qca)configuration perspectives
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