Abstract: With the intensification of global competition, the acceleration of technological change and the surge of market demand, enterprises have realized that they should not only promote knowledge sharing among employees and departments, but also carry out inter-organizational knowledge transfer, so as to expand their knowledge base and improve their performance. Although studies have found that knowledge transfer between enterprises can help knowledge recipients to obtain higher sales, improve product profit margin, market share and operating efficiency. However, few literature have deeply explored the influence of knowledge transfer and its complexity on the performance of knowledge recipients. Technology can be regarded as a form of knowledge. Acquiring and integrating technology from external knowledge sources is the key factor for enterprises to enhance their own technical capabilities and establish competitive advantages.
Firstly, literature suggests that there are differences in the scope and level of knowledge involved in technical exchange and technology transfer. The former is a discrete proprietary technology used to solve a specific engineering problem and tends to transfer relatively narrow and simple information resources. The latter is often a collection of techniques, approaches, and designs to solve a set of technical challenges that involve higher-level capabilities in the enterprise. Thus, it is a good supplement to the literature to compare the impact of technical exchange and technology transfer on the performance of technology recipients from the perspective of technology.
Secondly, how do technical exchange and technology transfer affect the performance of technology recipients? The literature on knowledge transfer and enterprises’ performance mainly interprets its influence mechanism from the perspective of organizational learning and knowledge creation. However, technical exchange and technology transfer involve more technology exchange activities between enterprises, which will especially affect the development of new products of technology recipients. At the same time, new product development, as an enterprise’s activity to create new products or improve existing products by utilizing resources and capabilities, mainly involves the new product creativity and new product development speed. The former is generally determined in the early stage of new product development and mainly depends on the acquisition and development of new ideas. The latter is more dependent on later stages, such as prototype development, industrial manufacturing, and mainly depends on efficient processes. Therefore, it is of great theoretical significance to explore the mediating role of these two factors to reveal the black box of technology transfer affecting the performance of technology recipients.
Finally, what contingency factors affect the above mechanism? According to the absorptive capacity theory, not all enterprises can effectively acquire, absorb, transform and utilize knowledge due to the differences in their absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity can be divided into potential absorptive capacity andrealized absorptive capacity. The former refers to the enterprises’ ability to receive external knowledge, while the latter emphasizes the enterprises’ ability to use knowledge and transform it into innovation output. Enterprises with high realized absorptive capacity are more likely to absorb useful technical knowledge through technology transfer and apply it to the process of new product development, so as to improve enterprises’ performance. Therefore, this paper will study the moderating role of the realized absorptive capacity of the technology recipients in the above intermediary mechanism, so as to further clarify the function boundary of the intermediary mechanism.
In this study, we focus on the new product development process of Chinese manufacturing and high-technology enterprises. Taking the manufacturing and high-technology enterprises in Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei and Fujian as samples, they are mainly distributed in the mechanical, electrical, energy, chemical, electronic and electrical industries. For each sample, questionnaires A and B are designed. The data in questionnaire A are mainly from major shareholders, directors and senior executives of enterprises, while the data in questionnaire B are mainly from department managers. During the research period from December 2014 to April 2015, data were collected mainly through face-to-face research and supplemented by E-mail. A total of 525 questionnaires were issued and 348 questionnaires were recovered, with a recovery rate of 66.29%. A total of 249 valid questionnaires were issued, with an effective rate of 71.56%. And we examine the effects of two forms of technology transfer between cooperative partners on performance of technology recipients. In addition, we explore the mediating role of new product creativity and new product development speed, and the moderating role of realized absorptive capacity.
The findings of the study are as follows. First, although literature has studied the influence of inter-firm knowledge transfer on the performance of knowledge recipients, few literature have studied the specific content of knowledge transfer and the influence of technology transfer on the performance of technology recipients. The findings show that technology transfer is more strongly associated with new product development speed and firm performance of technology recipients than technical exchange.
Second, the research shows that the influence of technical exchange and technology transfer on new product creativity and new product development speed of technology recipients is different. Technical exchange is more strongly associated with new product creativity of technology recipients than technology transfer.
Third, technical exchange has an indirect, positive relationship, via new product creativity, with firm performance of technology recipients. Technology transfer has an indirect, positive relationship, via new product development speed, with firm performance of technology recipients. This makes the mediating effect between technology transfer and enterprises’ performance more specific and explicit.
Last, previous studies have shown that the acquisition and absorption of external knowledge is not enough to help enterprises build competitive advantages unless they can use and transform it more efficiently than their competitors. Another finding is that the mediation effect of new product creativity is stronger when realized absorptive capacity of technology recipients is high. Therefore, it is of great theoretical value to discover the moderating role of realized absorptive capacity of technology recipients in the intermediary path of "technology transfer, new product development and enterprises’ performance" for a deeper understanding of the mechanism that technology transfer drives the performance of technology recipients.

Key words: technical exchange, technology transfer, new product creativity, new product development speed, realized absorptive capacity