Abstract: In the context of economic globalization, in which the high market uncertainty and the diverse demand motivate the competition subject to change from single enterprise to overall supply chain, the key point for core enterprise to obtain competitive advantage is to effectively manage its supply chain. Although supply chain integration is an important practice to improve performance according to theoretical and practical views, there are still some obstacles that facing by supply chain integration researchers and practitioners, such as integration may lead to conflict between goals and resources, and the resulting opportunistic behaviors as well. Social control, a relational governance mechanism, can thus help to effectively solve these problems. Moreover, how managers use interdependence relationship between enterprises and adopt appropriate relational governance mechanism to promote the establishment of mutually beneficial dependence relationship, and further enhance overall competitiveness of the supply chain,may assume important strategic significance. Based on the above analysis, this article intends to explore the improvement mechanism of supply chain performance from two aspects, say, to regulate transaction behavior and reduce transaction costs through relational governance;and to implement of social control, from the perspective of creating value, to promote the formation of mutually beneficial dependence and the harmony operation of supply chain integration practices, thereby helping to create value and improve performance.By regarding of social control mechanism and dependence as the breakthrough point, this paper intends to discuss the resulting correlation mechanisms that may exist among social control and dependence, supply chain integration and supply chain performance, and then use Structural Equation Model (SEM) to simulate the probable action paths, with dependence and supply chain integration as mediating variables. Empirical results are as follows: 1) Social control has a significant positive effect on dependence, supply chain integration and supply chain performance;2) Dependence plays an incomplete mediating role in the interaction of social control over supply chain integration, and the indirect effect is greater than the direct effect;3) Social control can indirectly affect the supply chain performance through dependence and supply chain integration and the causality of the two,but the mediating effect of dependence is the largest(44%), the mediating effect of the causal relationship between dependence and supply chain integration is the second(37%), and the mediating effect of supply chain integration is the smallest (19%); 4)Enterprise scale moderates the relationship between social control/dependence and supply chain integration/supply chain performance.
This paper attempts to enrich the research on the role of governance mechanisms to improve performance and clarify the role of supply chain integration practices as well.Empirical results demonstrate that through appropriate governance mechanisms, supply chains can make better use of dependence to enhance their overall competitiveness, which may exert a high reference value for managers to utilize supply chain network resources and gain competitive advantage.

Key words: social control, dependence, supply chain integration, supply chain performance