Methods for comprehensively evaluating the contribution of each partner to a high-tech virtual enterprise

Most partners in a high-tech virtual enterprise (HTVE) readily incline to reduce their innovation efforts for worrying about irrevocable loses resulted from unpredictable risks. Partners should be motivated by obtaining deserved compensation fairly based on their contribution. The contribution of a partner is obviously relevant to its costs exhausted during cooperation process, which is difficult to calculate for its relevancy with activities of other partners. Modified total cost composed of nonboundary cost, individual operation cost and fixed cost was introduced to solve this problem. And then Methods for apportioning each kind of nonboundary costs to involved partners are designed based on activity-based costing theory. Furthermore, a model was established to comprehensively examine how marginal ratio, risk preference, core competency and the modified total cost can quantitatively affect the contribution degree of each partner. According to the results derived from the model, contribution coefficient was provided as the index to express the contribution of each partner. The practical management mechanism supporting the comprehensive evaluation process was also proposed, which can serve as references for the governance of popular virtual enterprise.