The Power of Connectivity: Cooperative Network and Firm Performance in the IT Industry

The advancement of IT and the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” blurred the boundary between industries. The importance of strategic cooperation between enterprises is emphasized. IT companies must consider their existing business areas and create new territories to drive changes in the industry. They must also secure their competitive edge and manage economic costs to enable them to compete with their global counterparts. By utilizing their resources effectively, these firms can create value through inter-firm cooperation. This study analyzes the collaborative network of global IT companies using social network analysis and examines the effect of this network on firm performance. Collaborative linkages and betweenness centrality, which represent the bridging position of a firm in a network, significantly affect firm performance. This result highlights the importance of the structural position of a firm in a cooperative network of IT companies. This study also characterizes clusters in a network of IT companies. Most of these clusters comprise a combination of IT companies in diverse IT industries. These clusters suggest that these companies engage in multilateral cooperation without boundaries to maximize their business capabilities. This study offers practical implications for establishing a cooperative strategy and framework that can capture business trends in the IT industry from a macroscopic view. This study also visualizes collaborative networks in a multifaceted way using social network analysis to provide researchers and business practitioners with an informative viewpoint.