Abstract: Virtual enterprise (VE) is a dynamic organizational form, and its strategy formulation is completed by both the main and member enterprises, and the strategic structure changes due to the difference in the core competence of the main alliance. The VE is a main organization form to suit the dynamic complex market environment. VE’s strategy evolution and its mechanism become a core issue of the research. Using three enterprises cases, the article adopts grounded research paradigm of Chinese management to find different math of VE’s strategic formation.
The VE in this paper has gone through the initial stage and maturestage.Strategic path of the initial stage: under the influence of the market environment, leaders recognize and meet the survival needs of stakeholders to form the strategy of the initial stage of VE. The strategic path of the mature stage is: leaders recognize and meet the growth needs of stakeholders, and actively respond to the market environment to form the strategy of the mature stage of virtual enterprises.
In initial stage, the leader cognition impacts the stakeholders’ survival demand under the market environment. Then, the strategy is formulated in the VE’s primary stage. In mature stage, the leader cognition impacts the stakeholders’ growing demand. This way affects the market environment. Then, the strategy is formulated in the VE’s mature stage. Among these, leader cognition is a key factor to put forward strategic formation. With the leader cognition change from initiative to passivity, these are showing the formation’s features of strategy influenced by market and market influenced by strategy. Using the way of promoting enterprise behavior to society behavior, the article constructs the continuously dynamic ‘W’ model and the model of leader cognition influencing organization development, in order to further explain the motivation and mechanism in process of VE’s strategy evolution.
Leadership cognition is characterized by both continuity and fragmentation. The leader’s passive cognitive fragment comes from the initial development stage of virtual enterprise, while the leader’s active cognitive fragment comes from the mature development stage of virtual enterprise. The continuous development of virtual enterprises reflects the transformation of leaders’ cognition from passive to active, and the concept of virtual degree reflects the dynamic change of virtual degree and materialization degree of virtual enterprises. Therefore, the change process of leaders’ cognition from fragments to continuity can be represented by enterprise virtual degree. The ‘W’ model in this paper only introduces two typical stages. In fact, for the continuous development of virtual enterprises, this "W" will continue to spread, forming a complete picture of the strategic evolution of virtual enterprises.
In the initial stage of enterprise virtual operation, in order to integrate social resources as much as possible and improve core competence, the main alliance enterprise expands its virtual operation scale and changes its organizational mode.At the same time, with the expansion of virtual operation scale, the stability of enterprises decreases, and materialization becomes an effective way to stabilize and continuously develop their core capabilities, which reflects the strategy of virtual enterprises at the mature stage. The essence of both lies in the dynamic influence of virtual degree (dynamic adjustment of virtual and entity) on the strategic evolution of virtual enterprises.
From the path and key nodes, the evolution of the strategy of virtual enterprise follows the certain path, the path of starting point is the market environment, the end is also a market environment, the key nodes of the path is leader cognitive leader brand awareness and the leader, the combination of virtual and physical consciousness, the key nodes associated with stakeholder needs, also related to the virtual enterprise strategy. Moreover, this path has the characteristics of self-circulation and self-improvement.The starting path is formed passively, while the ending path is formed actively.
At the same time, the dynamic change of enterprise virtuality reflects the competitive process of environment and leader cognition in enterprise development. From the perspective of market structure division, the market in the initial stage of virtual enterprise is a relatively grand concept, including the whole market environment.In this environment, it is difficult for leaders to influence the market, and they can only passively adapt to the market by formulating corresponding corporate strategies. Accompanied by leaders to raise the level of cognitive potential opportunities in the market environment and effectively use and avoid risk, identify the virtual enterprise to be able to influence the market niche, the niche market leader cognitive achieve the change from passive to active, leaders have a higher control and initiative, and with the help of a virtual enterprise to control and influence of niche markets, combined with the synergies between different niche market, leaders established the enterprise market influence and market share, so as to consolidate its strategic position.
In this paper, with the aid of leader cognitive the paths, key nodes, continuity and fragmentary, virtual and enterprise strategy, market structure, cognitive complexity, such as multiple perspectives together, formed a dynamic spiral development process, breakthrough the limitation of the previous static research, and combined with the virtual enterprise management phenomenon ‘W’ model to a more extensive management meaning. This study demonstrates the role of leader cognition in the three-layer structure of social layer, organizational layer and individual layer from multiple dimensions. It connects the strategy change of the virtual enterprise horizontally, the market environment and the needs of the stakeholders vertically, and integrates its own strength and virtuality, so that the leader’s cognition comprehensively interprets the mechanism and process of the continuous evolution of the strategy of the virtual enterprise. To sum up, "going with the flow of the market" and "building momentum to enter the market" are an image summary of the strategic evolution process and mechanism of virtual enterprises.

Key words: grounded research paradigm of Chinese management, the virtual enterprise; , ‘W&rsquo, model of VE’s strategic evolution, leader cognition