关键词: 战略转型, 行动者网络理论, 能源企业, 案例研究

Abstract: What is the process of the strategic transformation of energy enterprises? How does the interaction between human activities and technology affect the outcome of transformation? How to manage the process of transformation? Previous studies have not fully explained and answered these questions because they either pay more attention to the impact of policy factors on the technology innovation and sustainable development strategy of energy enterprises, or explain the key factors determining the success or failure of strategic transformation based on different research perspectives without fully reveal the interaction among various actors in transformations. The actor-network theory (ANT) can serve as a useful theoretical lens to answer the above questions, especially where technology plays a critical role and it is crucial to analyze the interactions between technology and human being.  As the purpose of this study is to answer "how" to implement the strategic transformation of energy enterprises, which shows a dynamic process, the interpretative single case study method is suitable. There are two reasons for this. First, this paper applies ANT to explain the construction process of the actor network in the strategic transformation, which belongs to the interpretative study. Second, strategic transformation is complex in nature and is inextricably linked to the organizational context, which makes the in-depth single case study more suitable. ENN Group is selected for the case study based on three reasons. First, the availability of data can be ensured because the company has accumulated rich information since its establishment in 1989. Second, ENN Group is a typical case who commit to the energy industry for decades of years, and has experienced the process from a traditional energy enterprise to modern business mode. Third, technology plays an important role in the transformation of ENN Group, which is in line with the interpretation advantages of ANT. ENN Group has experienced two important strategic transformations. The first one took place around 2004. At that time, ENN Group gas business was booming, covering more than 50 cities in 14 provinces across the country, and had a significant position in the industry. However, the leader, Wang Yusuo, had realized the bottleneck restricting the long-term and sustainable development of ENN Group. First, although the public utility market is stable, the gas supply is controlled by others. Second, ENN Group has a regional monopoly position, which may cause inertia within the enterprise. Third, "poor gas, less oil and rich coal" energy structure in China determines that clean and efficient utilization of coal is the main development trend of the industry. Considering this context, Wang Yusuo put forward the first strategic transformation, that is, to extend the current industrial chain and enter the upstream coal chemical industry. The second transformation of ENN Group took place around 2014, marked by the proposal of "modern energy system", which has three characteristics. First, the energy structure is clean, which means to adopt a complementary supply pattern with renewable energy as the priority and fossil energy as the supplement. Second, distributed not centralized system will the main power transmission mode to enhance energy efficiency. Third, energy sharing mode will be implemented. Combined with the questions raised at the beginning of this paper and the interpretation perspective of ANT, the main conclusions are as follows. First, the strategic transformation process is in fact a process of building network of allies by the focal actor, who plays a leading role by the "translation" strategies to contribute to transformation success. It can be seen from the case that strategic transformation of an enterprise is a process in which key actors define and implement strategic issues through three stages: problem definition, interessement and enrollment. Second, the focal actor play a leading role in the strategic transformation. Although previous studies have also emphasized the role of leadership and communication in transformation, ANT can more clearly answer what the focal actor should communicate and what role they should play in different stages of the transformation. In the case of ENN Group, the focal actor need to show other key actors that an obligatory passage point (OPP) is the only solution to unify different interests in the problem definition stage. In the interessement stage, they need to persuade ally not to betray the network. In the enrollment stage, the focal actor need to strengthen the actor alliance constructed by embedding technology. Third, technology plays a key role in strategic transformation. ANT regards technology (non-human actor) and human as equal status, and emphasizes the influence of interaction between technology and human on network construction. Technology may inhibit or promote organizational change. In case of ENN Group, for example, the investment in the first transformation of the underlying basic ecological technology puts forward new requirements for technological innovation in the process of industrialization. On the other hand, it lays the foundation for ENN Group to gain advantages in the bidding projects later, then gradually establish close relations with other actors (government, business users, consumers), and makes the users more dependent on the OPP defined by ENN Group to form a more stable alliance. The "FANNENG" technology, a multi-energy complementary distributed power network system, is the OPP in the second transformation, based on which ENN Group′s business scope has been expanded into the back-end supply of energy, the middle end energy logistics system, the front-end sales and the side-end partners, basically forming an energy industry ecosystem. The actors in the ecosystem form a relationship of interdependence, symbiosis and win-win, which provides a survival mechanism for the sustainability of the network alliance. In a word, this study contribute to open the black box of interaction among various actors (human and nonhuman actor) in the strategic transformation of enterprises, and provide a theoretical basis for the strategic transformation of traditional energy enterprises.

Key words: strategic transformation, actor-network theory, energy enterprises, case study