Can legal protection improve the quality of enterprise innovation?

Abstract

Abstract: Enterprise innovation is an important driving force to promote high-quality development of economy and an inevitable requirement of building a country strong on quality. Therefore, how to improve the innovation quality of China′s enterprises effectively has become increasingly the focus of attention from all walks of life. To this end, a series of policies have been issued by government to continuously strengthen the support for invention patents, guide the market and enterprises to pay more attention to invention patents, and realize the improvement of enterprise innovation quality. However, relying only on the active guidance and support of the government is not a long-term solution. It is essential and fundamental to promote the endogenous upgrading of enterprise innovation activities through market forces, which needs a strong legal protection. So far, the economic development of China is still constrained by the low-quality innovation and inadequate legal protection. Therefore, this paper deeply discusses the relationship between legal protection and innovation quality of China′s enterprises, hoping to further fill the research gaps in the field of "law and innovation", and provide theoretical references for legal protection and innovation development in China.Based on the analysis of enterprise innovation motivation, this paper assumes that the legal protection can increase the demand of substantive innovation, crowd out the strategic innovation, so as to improve the innovation quality of enterprises. In this paper, the indirect mechanism of capital effect, technology effect and information effect are theoretically assumed based on the three problems of "financing constraint", "insufficient technology reserve" and "information asymmetry" faced by enterprises in the process of improving innovation quality. Based on the patent application data of listed companies in China′s manufacturing industry from 2009 to 2016, we analyze the average effect and influencing mechanism of legal protection on the innovation quality of enterprises. From the empirical results, we found that legal protection has a positive effect on promoting substantive innovation and overall innovation quality of enterprises, and has a certain inhibitory effect on strategic innovation. Besides, the analysis based on multiple intermediary models shows that legal protection can promote substantive innovation of enterprises through capital effect, technology effect and information effect, among which the technology effect is the dominant intermediary effect. Further research shows that compared with the improvement of judicial efficiency, justice, enforcement, transparency and legal intermediary organizations can better promote enterprises to carry out substantive innovation and improve the innovation quality. And legal protection has a more obvious positive impact on the substantive innovation and innovation quality of non-high-tech enterprises and mature enterprises.According to the research results, we draw out the following policy implications: First, the national judicial organs should strengthen the legal protection for the substantive innovation of enterprises, and implement different legal protections for innovation according to the characteristics of enterprises and the external environment. Second, it is essential to further protect and promote enterprises′ trade credit, promote the long-term development of technology trading market, standardize the accounting information disclosure of listed companies, and strengthen the effective ways of legal protection to improve the enterprises′ innovation quality. Finally, higher efficiency of legal protection should be established on the basis of ensuring impartiality, which also needs to break the dilemma of "law enforcement difficulty", increase the degree of legal openness, and support high-quality legal intermediary organizations in the market.Compared with the existing researches, the innovations of this paper lie in the followings: First, considering the level of innovation, this paper does a difference analysis on the relationship between law and innovation and reveals the possible impact of legal protection on the enterprises′ innovation quality in a more comprehensive and in-depth way. Second, by introducing a parallel multiple mediation model, this paper clarifies the mechanism of legal protection producing innovation promotion effect, including capital, technology and information effect. We further analyze the influence legal protection of different dimensions and enterprise heterogeneity on the innovation incentive effect of legal protection, thus deepens the interpretation of the influence of legal protection on micro-enterprise innovation behavior, and provides a reliable reference and reasonable basis for the government to formulate and perfect relevant laws and policies.

Key words: legal protection, innovation quality, manufacturing industry, mechanism analysis

Zhou Zhou, Xia Xiaoyu, Li Yameng. Can legal protection improve the quality of enterprise innovation?[J]. Science Research Management, 2023, 44(4): 127-135.

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