科研管理 ›› 2019, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (5): 24-35.

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

企业成长与创新视角下的产业链升级研究

高照军,张宏如   

  1. 常州大学 商学院,江苏 常州213164
  • 收稿日期:2018-01-15 修回日期:2018-07-13 出版日期:2019-05-20 发布日期:2019-05-21
  • 通讯作者: 高照军
  • 基金资助:
    国家社科基金重点项目:“供给侧结构性改革视阈中的新生代农民工就业转型研究”(基金编号:16ASH005,起止时间:2016-2019)。

A study of industrial chain upgrading from a perspective of firm growth and innovation

Gao Zhaojun, Zhang Hongru   

  1. Business School, Changzhou University, Changzhou 213164, Jiangsu, China
  • Received:2018-01-15 Revised:2018-07-13 Online:2019-05-20 Published:2019-05-21

摘要: 产业链升级是中国企业摆脱跨国公司低端锁定的重要途径。以企业成长与企业创新理论为基础,讨论了企业在不同成长阶段入嵌产业链的程度。研究发现青春期企业创新投入越强入嵌程度越低,吸收能力越强入嵌程度越高。新创期入嵌产业链程度较低,而青春期较高。创新投入与入嵌程度之间关系受到新创期负向调节。同时,吸收能力与入嵌程度之间关系受到新创期的负向调节、青春期的正向调节。研究结论对中国企业产业链升级具有理论贡献与实践启示。

关键词: 企业成长理论, 产业链, 创新投入, 吸收能力, 入嵌程度

Abstract: For some emerging market firms (EMF), industrial chain upgrading is one of the most important way of breaking away from the “low-end locking” by multinational enterprises in the world. Many strategies are adopted by EMFs in order to create and maintain their competitive positions in the world markets. The competition pressure drives EMFs to find other trajectories to survive their markets. The fact is that single firm hardly survives and develops when facing such challenge. Under such circumstance, the growth of those firms is linked closely to the process of industrial chain upgrading. Meanwhile, most of them adopted innovation as one effective strategy to compete with other firms. Therefore, understanding the innovative activities of firms in different growth stages in the process of industrial chain upgrading draws attentions of many scholars, especially those emerging-centered ones. Industrial chains create several competitive advantages for EMFs in market competition. Meanwhile, firm innovation activities enhance the upgrading process of industrial chains. First, innovative inputs of firm could be better utilized with the help of knowledge spillovers both within and across industrial chains. Within the same industrial chain, firms transfer their knowledge more smoothly, and knowledge spillovers benefit them through the activities of sharing and learning. At the same time, they also could easily find and establish their collaboration relationships by participating into some industrial chains. So, those firms could share their experiences more effectively with the help of a network structure of industrial chains. As a result, they could largely avoid the outside uncertainty and risks. Furthermore, the absorptive capabilities of firms make firms ‘digest’ knowledge outside the boundaries of them. Some industrial chains even create an infrastructure to facilitate such fresh knowledge. The absorptive capabilities also make firms more competitive through, for instance, the secondary innovation. Therefore, discussing the underling mechanism of factors including innovative inputs, firm absorptive capabilities in the context of industrial chains becomes an important research question. Besides, the upgrading of industrial chains depends mainly on the growth of firms within them. Firm innovation activities are more influenced by entrepreneurship of newly founded firms. Traditionally, a start-up grows in chains and becomes an adolescent firm. The different stages of a firm growth draw the attentions of many scholars. Both start-ups and adolescent firms are a member of collaborators or competitors in industrial chains. They play a big role in determining the upgrading of industrial chains. Therefore, the process of firm growth should be fully considered when we are trying to understand the upgrading of industrial chains in the emerging markets.In the purpose of solving the above questions, this paper incorporates a firsthand data set of firms in the emerging markets of China and employs a method of ordinal regression to examine the theoretical hypotheses constructed by it. On the basis of firm growth and innovation theories, it explores the degree of embedding industrial chain in the different stages of firm growth. In the field of actual business, a single firm hardly survives itself in today’s market competition. However, industrial chains create a context through which the single firm could find others so that they could collaborate together in innovation. Then, embedding into industrial chains becomes determinant for firms who adopt collaborative innovation.The findings provide strong evidences supporting our hypotheses. First, as to the relationship between firm innovative inputs and embedding degree, it is still a question without accurate answers. We then begin our study with a competing hypothesis (H1). The empirical results demonstrate there is a negative relationship between firm innovative inputs and the embedding degree in industrial chains. Second, the absorptive capabilities of firms affect the embedding degree to industrial chains in the process of firm innovation. A firm with better absorptive capabilities could transfer outside knowledge more efficient and utilize them into building their own competitive capabilities. The competitiveness further helps them to embed industrial chains more effectively. Therefore, there is a positive relationship between the absorptive capabilities and the embedding degree, which is supported by our empirical findings (H2). Third, we analyze effects of innovative inputs and absorptive capabilities in different stages of the firm growth. We find that start-ups are more difficult to embed into industrial chains. One of the possible explanations might be that start-ups generally face some market barriers like the scarcity of resources. Meanwhile, some start-ups are short of business experiences making them rather difficult to collaborate with other firms. Our empirical findings provide evidences at this point (H3a). Furthermore, being a start-up negatively moderates the above relationship. That is to say, the negative relationship between firm innovative inputs and the embedding degree is strengthened by the attribute of being a start-up (H3b). Such effects could also be indicated by the role of start-ups on the positive relationship between the absorptive capabilities and embedding degree. As shown by our empirical evidences, their positive association is weakened by a start-up (H3c). Forth, with the same logic of the effect of start-ups, we examine the effects of adolescent firms. In comparison with a start-up an adolescent firm is more likely to embed industrial chains, which is strongly supported by our results (H4a). In a further step, we hypothesized that being an adolescent firm positively moderates the relationship between its innovative inputs and embedding degree (H4b). However, the hypothesis is not supported. But it shows that being an adolescent firm positively moderates the relationship between firm absorptive capabilities and embedding degree. In other words, the positive relationship between the absorptive capabilities and embedding degree is strengthened by an adolescent firm (H4c). As shown by our empirical results, most of our hypotheses are supported.This paper has theoretical significance and bears profound practical implications. Although firm innovation and networking (here refers to industrial chain networks) are accepted as the most powerful way of competing in world markets for EMFs, rare studies have provided any explanations as to the joint effects of them. We synthesize them in applying them into the context of industrial chains. By doing so, we expand boundaries of firm innovation and industrial upgrading by providing a theoretical lens of firm growth. The stages of start-up and adolescence are examined with the interplay of firm growth and industrial upgrading. Some factors determining firm innovation activities are involved in the above theoretical context, including innovative inputs, absorptive capabilities. Practically, our study casts a light on firm innovation and expansion in emerging markets. Research findings show that the more firms’ innovation inputs the lower embedding degree and the higher absorptive capacities the higher embedding degree in the start-up period. Meanwhile, compared to the adolescence period, firms in the period of start-ups have a lower level of embedding degree. So we argue that it’s better for practical firms to spend more efforts into strengthening absorptive capabilities rather than inputting resources when they are just beginning their business. Furthermore, the relationship between innovation inputs and embedding degree is negatively moderated by the start-up period. And the relationship between absorptive capacities and embedding degree is negatively moderated by the start-up period, while positively moderated by the adolescence period. The practical implication might be that firm should notice those differences when it selects embedding an industrial chain. For instance, a flexible embedding strategy in different growth phrases might be a rational choice. Precisely, in earlier stage, the absorptive capabilities are more important than innovation inputs. And in the later stage, collaborative activities should be more addressed by innovative firms.Even though, our study has some limitations. First, our sample is constructed based on some High-Tech firms in the emerging markets of China. Although it gives us some convenience to examine the research question, but it also has shortcomings the most of first hand data sources could not avoid. For example, it is more subjective in terms of the answers provided by the questionnaires. Second, we discuss the different roles taken by start-ups and adolescent firms in upgrading processes of industrial chains. However, some latent factors, like geographical elements, influencing firm growth and innovation activities might be neglected in this study. To some extent, this makes our conclusions might not be universally applied. Of course, investigating this question might beyond the scope of our study. However, it does create space for future research.

Key words: firm growth theory, industrial chain, innovation input, absorptive capabilities, embedding degree