公司興業精神：中華汽車與國華紡織的個案研究

Abstract

Abstract The global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 has a great impact across industries. The sudden shrinkage of consumer demands caused drops in global sales of the automobile and textile industries. In the automobile industry, the global sales dropped 9.48% in 2008 and 6.1% in 2009 according to the Automotive Research and Testing Center (ARTC) report. Similarly, in the textile industry, according to the WTO reports, global exports of textiles and apparels had an increase of 4.46% in 2008 compared with 2007. This growth rate is much smaller than the rate of 10.62% in 2007. In 2009, the global exports of textiles and apparels had a plunge of 14.81% compared with 2008. Although the textile industry seemed to be impacted by the financial crisis less apparently than the automobile industry, firms in both industries need to react to the environmental challenges in order to survive. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the entrepreneurial activities and practices of two firms in Taiwan. The first company is China Motor Corporation (China Motor), while the second company is Kuohwa Garment and Enamel Industry Co., Ltd. (Kuohwa). Since staying with the old practices may obstruct the growth and profitability of a firm, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial actions might become important to the survival and growth of firms. This thesis aims to identify the methods used by the two firms to facilitate corporate entrepreneurship. Through analyzing the four aspects of corporate entrepreneurship (that is, structure and management style, resource leverage, proactiveness, and learning capability), this study is expected to enhance our understandings on how firms incorporate corporate entrepreneurship and how the entrepreneurial actions influence the strategies of firms. This study used the qualitative method, specifically, the case study method, to conduct this research. This study collects both primary data through field interviews, and secondary data through public databases such as company websites, annual reports, academic journals, university database, and so on. The empirical findings show that corporate entrepreneurship is important for firms to react to the fast-changing business world. Corporate entrepreneurship facilitates the emergence of new business ideas and/or new operation systems, and helps improve the financial performance and/or daily operations of firms. For example, China Motor had a quick rebound on its financial performance after adopting several entrepreneurial mechanisms. Although Kuohwa is not as effective in terms of being entrepreneurial as China Motor, it also puts a lot of efforts to practice entrepreneurship because the top management believes that corporate entrepreneurship is critical to its survival.