Abstract: There are no consistent arguments in existed literatures whether the centralized or decentralized R&D organization structure promotes firm’s technological innovation performance. With the knowledge-based view of the firm and organizational economics,this paper examines the relationship between R&D organization structure and innovation performance and conducts an empirical study based on 362 hi-tech listed firms in china. Furthermore, we introduce two variables of organizational slack and diversification, which can reflect the status of resources composed of resource’s affluence and resource’s diversity, and explore their moderating effects on the relationship between R&D organization structure and innovation performance using Variance analysis and regression analysis. The results show that decentralized R&D structure boosts firm’s innovation performance irrespective of differences among industries. Furthermore, the relationship is positively moderated by unabsorbed organizational slack and product diversification. The results imply that Chinese firms prefer to improve the firm’s innovation performance using the decentralized structure with exploration and expansive sourcing which can be explained by knowledge-based view of the firm. To a great extent, the effect of such R&D structure is moderated by resources in the firm.

Key words: R&D organization structure, innovation performance, organizational slack, diversification