| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國際企業學研究所 === 91 === Thesis Abstract
The trend of vertical de-integration in IT industry renders great opportunities for Taiwanese firms to emerge as an indispensable global supply base of IT products. Both system and component companies have achieved a significant growth during the past decade. Of grate interest is the growth of specialized component firm through forward vertical integration, which will potentially create structural conflict between the focal firm and its downstream customers. This thesis research took the emergence of barebone operating model in 1997 as empirical context and investigated how two specialized component firms of similar size, Delta and Faxconn, reacted to such a structural opportunity. We especially focus on their pursuit of barebone opportunity and strategic results, upon which research inferences on determinants of vertical integration decision are based.
For these two cases, Delta did not eventually make itself a system product company, while Faxconn was successfully growing from barebone opportunity and became a leading supplier in both connector and end system. Based on detailed case analyses, the present research found that: (1) Potential conflicts between component firm and their downstream customers serve as a critical obstacle for a component company pursuing forward vertical integration strategy; (2) A firm’s strategic intent and sustainability of (component) product technology, which led to difficult-to-substitute advantage, are two key factors driving a component company pursuing forward vertical integration strategy; (3) If product technology is not sustainable enough, maintaining a complementary role with respect to customers may help the component firm to reduce the structural conflict.
In general, we suggest that component firms should consider its capability and the co-operation structure in industry to formulate its competitive advantage. Pursuing value creation while maintaining constructive complement will result in win-win solutions. Strategic implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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