The public-oriented e-Hub construction for strategic alliances by using social network analysis

This paper introduces the public-oriented e-Hub construction for strategic alliances in the B2B virtual community. The public-oriented e-Hub can link with all participating internet firms on the basis of their business models, and consequently help them share their core competence, management resources, and so on. Based upon this perspective, this paper presents the procedures corresponding with social network analysis for strategic alliances of small and medium internet firms. In addition, this paper tries to analyze the relationships among degree of competition, potential of strategic alliance, and financial performance. The results show that the firms with more easily accepting various strategic alliances make higher financial performance under more competitive environment. This suggests that strategic alliances through the public-oriented e-Hub in the B2B virtual community provide the internet firms with various opportunities.