Organizational capabilities are the foundation of sustained competitive advantage for enterprises, industries, regions, and a country. This paper studies the formation and evolution of organizational capabilities at the enterprise level according to the system emergence principle, which has important practical significance and academic value. This paper proposes a conceptual model of emergence process of enterprise organizational capability system, and intends to borrow information entropy to measure the emergence fitness of the system. Besides, This paper builds a measurement model and index system for the emergence fitness of enterprise organizational capability system by using the concept and models of information entropy. In addition, the authors select Kunming Yunnei Power Co., Ltd. as a case, and determine 22 indicators according to the specific situation of Yunnei Power as well as obtain the relevant data and information from 2008 to 2012 by means of use of the methods as interview, questionnaire, and text analysis. And, the authors complete an empirical study about Kunming Yunnei Power Co., Ltd. by using Matlab7.0 Toolbox. The research findings are as follows: 

Firstly, we construct the conceptual model of the emergence of enterprise organizational capability system based on the systems theory, and  for the first time propose the new concept, that is, enterprise organizational capability system is a complex adaptive system with multiple Agents based on organizational processes and organizational routines. Organizational capabilities emerge in the system, when the organizational processes within, and between pioneer enterprises, follower enterprises, and complementary innovative companies in the system operate in accordance with organizational routines and become integrated. In times of digitalization, enterprise organizational capability is a competence to design, monitor, restructure, and optimize organizational processes within and between the pioneer enterprises, follower enterprises, and complementary innovative companies which is suitable for the digital transformation, digital business model innovation,  construction of innovation ecosystems and support of orderly operation of business processes. It is embodied as the management capability to continuously improve the efficiency and  effect of the orderly operation of the organizational processes of the system according to the organizational routines of the pioneer enterprises, follower enterprises and complementary innovative companies in the system. 

Secondly, we build the measurement model and index system of the emergence fitness of  enterprise organizational capability system with general applicability by using the concept and measure method of information entropy. According to the concept of information entropy, we propose that the entropy in the enterprise organizational capability system can be divided into positive entropy and negative entropy. We also propose that the positive entropy in the enterprise organizational capability system includes the entropy of organizational process and the entropy of organizational routine, and the negative entropy includes the direct environmental entropy and the indirect environmental entropy, which provides an analytical approach for measuring the emergence fitness of the enterprise organizational capability system by applying the information entropy. In addition, we propose that the entropy change process of enterprise organizational capability system can be divided into two parts. The first part is the "entropy flow" of the system, which refers to the entropy changes generated when the system Agents, including pioneering enterprises, following enterprises and complementary innovative companies, exchange materials, energy and information with the external environment. The second part is the "entropy generation" of the system, which refers to the entropy change caused by the distribution and operation of the organizational processes within and between the pioneering enterprises, following enterprises and complementary innovative companies in the system, and the evolution of the organizational routines followed by the distribution and operation of these organizational processes, as well as the interaction between these organizational processes and organizational routines. The entropy flow reflects the adaptability of the system to the external environment, the entropy generation reflects the coordination degree of the organization processes and the organization practices in the system, and the total entropy change represents the integral emergence of the enterprise organizational capability system.

Thirdly, we conduct the empirical study based on the case study of Kunming Yunnei Power Co.,Ltd. The case study shows that the empirical analysis results of the measurement model for the emergence fitness of corporate organizational capability system are basically consistent with the trend of corporate organizational capability strength from 2008 to 2012, and reflect the abundant emergent phenomena and formation mechanism of the strong emergence of corporate organizational capability system. Through the case study, it is preliminarily determined that the measurement model and index system of the emergence fitness of  enterprise organizational capability system based on information entropy have general applicability and operability. Also, the rationality of the conceptual model of the emergence process of enterprise organizational capability system is preliminarily verified. Based on the two dimensions of both  organizational process and organizational routine, the structural effect, organizational effect and integral emergence of enterprise organizational capability system, as well as the generation mechanism of system organizational capability cab be understood, which is in line with the basic principle of systems theory and has rationality. 

Finally, this paper proves that enterprise organizational capability system is a complex adaptive system with multiple Agents based on organizational processes and organizational routines from two aspects of both theoretical model construction and case study. And, the introduction of Shannon information entropy to study the emergence fitness of enterprise organizational capability system is of general applicability, which further proves that the entropy theory can be introduced into the management research field to search for "management entropy".

 

enterprise organizational capability system, emergence fitness, information entropy, measurement model, case study