Business Ecosystem Constructive Elements

Abstract

As learned from the review of existing literature, the constructs of a business ecosystem should be addressed further as the system could be understood through exploring its constructive elements (Von Bertalanffy 1969). Accordingly, many scholars applied this constructs study to different levels of manufacturing systems: in 1984, Hayes and Wheelwright highlighted constructs study by the framework of ‘structure-infrastructure’ model since constructive elements had a big impact on system manufacturing strategy (Hayes & Wheelwright 1984). In 1998, Shi and Gregory applied this framework at the international manufacturing system level as intra-firm level (Shi & Gregory 1998) and Harland addressed the interfirm supply-chain level (Harland 1996) as well. Other scholars also paid attention to global engineering networks (Zhang et al. 2007) and global supply network level (Srai & Gregory 2008). As a result, this chapter has adopted the framework of ‘structure-infrastructure’ to deconstruct the business ecosystem in order to understand the business ecosystem itself.