Title: How to maintain the sustainability of an e-commerce firm? From the perspective of social network

Authors: Ting Shao; Zhenyu Liu

Addresses: School of Management, Xiamen University, 361005, China. ' School of Management, Xiamen University, 361005, China

Abstract: This paper examines the essence that can help maintain the sustainability of an e-commerce firm from the perspective of social network. We develop a comprehensive theory, using Penrose's (1959) resource-capability-firm's growth framework as an integrative theoretical hook to link separate perspectives from network structure, network resource, and firm's sustainability. Then, this paper proposes three hypotheses related to network resource and sustainability. Striving for higher network centrality, more complete membership and more diverse tie modalities, in addition exploiting the resources smartly can serve as sources of sustainability. Finally, it takes case studies of Alibaba to test the hypotheses for how to maintain the sustainability of an e-commerce firm.

Keywords: company sustainability; social networks; network structure; network resources; triple bottom line; TBL; sustainable development; e-commerce; electronic comemrce; firm sustainability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2012.048906

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2012 Vol.11 No.3/4, pp.212 - 224

Published online: 21 Nov 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article