Science Research Management

A review and outlook of research on innovation policy coordination

Du Genwang, Wang Tao

2019, 40(7): 1-11.

Abstract ( 344 )

Innovation policy integrates many policy contents from science and technology policy, industry policy, finance policy and so on. If these policies are well coordinated, they can magnify the policy effect of each other, on the contrary, they may weaken the policy effect of each other.With the continuous expansion of the depth and breadth of innovation policy, higher requirements are put forward for the coordination of innovation policy.Since the 1970s, the research on innovation policy coordination has been deepening. The United States, OECD and so on have made special research on innovation policy coordination. Some important theoretical achievements have been published in the journal of 《Research Policy》. However, some basic issues of innovation policy coordination are still unclear, which restricts the further development of innovation policy coordination research, and also brings inconvenience to guide policy practice.On the basis of systematic literature research, this paper makes a thorough and comprehensive overview of innovation policy coordination research from aspects of connotation, influencing factors, subject dimension, tool dimension, measurement and adjustment, and forecasts future research.
The connotation of innovation policy coordination includes the interaction of innovation policy subjects, the collocation and interaction of innovation policy tools and forming innovation policy system. Focusing on the coordination of innovation policy subjects continued until around 2010. In 2010, after OECD discussed ‘Policy Mix’, the coordination of innovation policy tools becomes the focus of research. After 2000, the research on innovation policy system has gradually risen with the development of innovation system theory. Innovation policy coordination is affected by many factors. Governmental governance structure affects the power allocation and cooperation of relevant departments of innovation policy. The change and reorganization of government brings about changes in the coordination of innovation policy. The coordination of innovation policy is the inheritance and development of the previous coordination mode in consideration of the current situation. With the deepening understanding of the innovation law, there are more and more ways to coordinate innovation policies. In the practice of innovation policy, countries actively or imperceptibly learn the countries which do well. Think tanks can provide scientific theoretical knowledge for innovation policy coordination.
There are three types, four types and nine types in the study of coordination of innovation policy subjects. Three types are classified from low to high as atomic coordination, low coordination and high coordination. Four types are classified from low to high as negative coordination, active coordination, policy integration and strategic coordination. Nine types division method divides the four types into nine types, namely decision-making by participants independently, information exchange with other participants, consultation with other participants, avoiding inconsistencies, seeking consistency, arbitration to policy differences, setting restrictions for participants’ behavior, setting priorities and government strategies. Government power is allocated horizontally and vertically, and the innovation policy subjects are coordinated within this framework. The existing research mainly involves these kinds of coordination: Coordination between international organizations and state governments; Coordination among state governments; Coordination between central government and ministries of central government; Coordination among ministries of central government; Coordination between central government ministries and their agencies; Coordination among agencies of central government ministries; Coordination between the central government and the province governments. The cooperation and competition relationships mainly exist among the innovation policy subjects at the same level.
The research on the coordination of innovation policy tools is mainly carried out from the perspectives, types, the coordination among specific innovation policy tools, the coordination between innovation policy tools and other policy tools, and so on. Innovative policy tools may be combined in the four perspectives of policy space, regulatory space, geographic space and time. There are five types of coordination of innovation policy tools: continuity, complementarity, intersection, lack and contradiction. The coordination of innovation policy tools can also be divided into five other types: superposition, integration, from different levels, competition and cooperation, strengthening and weakening. The studies on the innovation policy tools are carried on from the aspects of coordination of R&D support measures, supply-side policy tools and demand-side policy tool, policy tools for different levels of innovation, innovation policy tools at different levels, technology innovation policy tools with other innovation policy tools. The coordination of innovation policy tools with environmental policy tools(sustainable development policy tools) and information society policy tools has also attracted attention of research.
There are direct and indirect methods to measure the coordination of innovation policies. The direct method measures the coordination of innovation policies with variables such as policy subject behavior, policy text, fiscal revenue and expenditure, and the indirect method measures the coordination of innovation policies through innovation performance and innovation behavior and so on. When the coordination of innovation policy is not good, the policy subject needs to make the impression of change, or it is conducive to maintaining the sector status, the innovation policy coordination will be adjusted. The ways of adjustment include reconstructing policy system, reorganizing institutions, rebuilding inter-agency links, optimizing policy tools and implementing specific projects.
The inadequacy of expressing the connotation of innovation policy coordination from the three aspects of subject, tool and system is that it is easy to talk about policy too simple. Adding purpose into the connotation can make up for this deficiency, and it should be further researched in the future. There are many factors affecting the coordination of innovation policies. More factors should be paid attention to. It is necessary to study the effects of department interest, innovation level, type, mode, culture, internationalization and economy on the coordination of innovation policies. Coordination of innovation policies are mainly focused from the aspects of subject and tool dimensions. We should expand the research of these two dimensions and extend to other dimensions such as policy process and time stage. We should make a systematic and in-depth study on the theoretical basis, applicable condition, standardized procedure, method comparison, secondary development and specific application of the coordination measurement and optimization method of innovation policy. We should study the interaction among different innovation processes, different innovation subjects and different innovation levels, and then use it to measure the coordination of innovation policies. The motive force of coordination and adjustment of innovation policy can be studied further from realistic need, policy problem and political need.

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A research on the evolution of China’s standardization policy based on textual quantitative analysis

Zhu Xinmei, Yu Xiao，Lu Hongyu

2019, 40(7): 12-21.

Abstract ( 519 )

Standards have been transformed from modern means of production to important tools related to national security, national ecological development and changes in economic life. Along with the role of standardization in social and economic development, the number of standards shows blowout growth, involving all trades and professions. However, the quality of the new standards is not uniform, so more and more attention has been paid to the governance of standards. Standardization policy is the most direct manifestation of standardization management. Since the reform and opening up, China has promulgated a series of relevant national standardization policies, which is an important basis for the reform of China’s standardization system.
This paper collects 245 standardization policies at the national level from 1979 to 2017. Based on the textual characteristics of policies in different periods (number of papers, intergovernmental relations, theme changes), the process of standardization reform is analyzed from the policy level. Based on the typical key events or key documents in the process of standardization development in China, this paper divides the period of 1979-2017 into four main stages: the establishment stage of institutional framework from 1979 to 2001; the innovation stage from 2002 to 2008; the multi-level diversification stage from 2009 to 2014; and the open governance stage from 2015 to 2017.
Through the information of the publishing units of standardization policy texts, this paper uses Gephi to analyze the social network of the publishing units in which co-publishing exists, so as to study the inter-governmental relationship network among the publishing units and excavate the cooperation among the publishing units. Subsequently, the R language package is used to segment policy texts, remove irrelevant words, obtain annual high-frequency words, and draw overall word cloud. In this paper, the high-frequency words in different stages are analyzed and the evolution process of standardization policy theme is preliminarily understood. Finally, this paper uses content analysis to analyze the keywords and key policies of each stage of standardization policy, so as to study the evolution route of standardization policy and explore the development track and general rules of standardization management in China.
The results show that from the analysis of the number of policies and the publishing units, we can see that the government’s supply capacity for standardization policies has been continuously strengthened, the effectiveness of policy issuance has been expanded, and the application fields of standards have been expanded; from the analysis of inter-governmental cooperation relations among publishing units, we can see that the standardization system has gradually been reformed, and standards have become the link between technological innovation and market innovation, showing synergistic development with innovation and industry; from the corresponding analysis results of the keywords, we can see that the focus of standardization policy in different periods is spreading with the technological change, penetrating into more levels, the emergence of standards stimulates the burst of market vitality; from the analysis of the evolution of the theme of standardization policy, we can see that the government is actively guiding standardization to become an important link in the value chain of new technology and industrial development, and standards become one of the driving forces behind the rise of emerging markets.

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A comparative study of the S&T collaboration networks in countries along the Belt and Road

Chen Xin

2019, 40(7): 22-32.

Abstract ( 213 )

Since the Belt and Road Initiative has been advanced in the year of 2013, more and more countries in this area have developed science and technology cooperation with each other. Some researchers have studied the science and technology cooperation among countries along the Belt and Road. Most of the existing literature explores the science and technology cooperation between China and some major countries along the Belt and Road by using the research method of scientometrics. However, it did not analyze the overall status of scientific and technical cooperation between all countries in the area with the research method of social network analysis. Moreover, although the existing literature studied the evolution of science and technology cooperation among countries along the Belt and Road by contracting the cooperation in different ages, it did not contract the scientific and technical cooperation among countries in the Area in different technical fields. Accordingly, based on the information of transnational PCT patent application collaboration of countries along the Belt and Road which was searched from Incopat patent information platform, this paper established the scientific and technical collaboration networks in five different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road. It analyzed the network visible graphs, network overall structure indicators and network centrality indicators with social network analysis method.
On the basis of the findings, it explores the similarities and differences of science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road so as to provide suggestions for reference and promotions for countries in the area to make and implement a suitable science and technology collaboration policy.
On the one hand, this article finds that the scientific and technical collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road have three important similarities. First, the cooperation breadth and cooperation depth of nodes of each science and technology collaboration network in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road seem to be obviously different. Second, five science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road have the followed common characteristics: relatively big network scale, low network density and short average distance. This illustrated that although most of the countries along the Belt and Road have taken part in the science and technology collaboration the collaboration relationship in the networks is not close enough and there are enormous opportunities for collaboration in the networks. Third, almost all of the core nods of science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road are richer countries in this area. 
On the other hand, this article finds that science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road have three significant differences. First, big nodes and the collaborative pair of countries connecting by thick line are different in scientific and technical collaboration networks in five technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road. This means that the country which has collaborated with the most nodes and the pair of countries which have collaborated for the most times are different in science and technology collaboration networks in five technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road. Second, science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road are classified into different types. The science and technology collaboration networks in the fields of instruments and other fields have low network scale and low network density. Thus, both of the networks in the two fields are grouped into Newborn Model network. The strategy for developing Newborn Model network is to enlarge the number of nodes of the science and technology network. The science and technology collaboration networks in the fields of electrical engineering and mechanic engineering have relatively high network scale and relative low network density and are defined as Youngster Model. Youngster Model network should not only enlarge the number the nodes but also strength the collaboration between the existing nodes. The science and technology collaboration networks in the field of chemistry is close to Adult Model because this network has relatively high network scale and relatively high network density. Adult Model network should focus on increasing the existing collaborating between nodes in the network. Third, the distribution and order of core nodes of science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road are different. For example, the first core node of science and technology collaboration networks in fields of chemistry, mechanic engineering, instrument and other fields is Russia, yet that of science and technology collaboration network in field of electrical engineering is China.
The finding above shows that, all of the science and technology collaboration networks in different technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road have the problem that few richer countries have more powerful influence in the network and the overall collaboration relationship is not close enough. Science and technology collaboration networks in five technical fields of countries along the Belt and Road have various differences. The development of scientific and technical collaboration network in chemistry of countries along the Belt and Road is relatively mature compared with those of other technical fields. Besides, most countries along the Belt and Road may have different influence scientific and technical collaboration networks in different technical fields. According to the research results, this article points out that countries along the Belt and Road should make a reasonable choice of strategic technical fields on the basis of their own development need, and make a proper policy so as to push forward transnational science and technology collaboration with their own characteristics step by step.

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A research on the impact of indigenous innovation on international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing industry

He Yubing, Han Qiumin, Zeng Yi

2019, 40(7): 33-46.

Abstract ( 274 )

The last four decades has witnessed the rapid growth of China’s manufacturing. With the advantage of low cost and rapid response to market demand, China has become the world’s largest country in manufacturing. However, the technological capability of Chinese firms is still weak compared to that of developed countries. The "Made in China 2025" plan aims to facilitate the transformation of China from a manufacturing giant with a focus on quantity to one with a qualitative edge which is based on R&D and technological innovation. Therefore, in the context of China implementing the strategy of innovation-driven development, an analysis of the impact of indigenous innovation on manufacturing’s international competitiveness is of great importance, either practically or theoretically.
Research on indigenous innovation of industry originated from discussion about the road selection of technological innovation in developing country or newly industrialized country in the 1980s. Most scholars focused on the issue of how the backward countries, especially Japan and South Korea, could achieve technological leapfrogging. Although a variety of empirical evidence showed the value of indigenous innovation for China’s manufacturing, there is little work providing strong evidence about how indigenous innovation ultimately influenced China’s manufacturing. In addition, samples in previous studies were confined to single industry, lack of analysis of the manufacturing as a whole. In this paper, we try to contribute to the debate by focusing on the relationships between indigenous innovation and the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing.
Indigenous innovation is the foundation and guarantee for Chinese enterprises to participate in international market, which is reflected not only in the initiative of enterprise to obtain innovative property rights and innovative benefits through internal efforts, but also in the dominance of enterprise in controlling innovative benefits. Building on the literature on innovation economics, we posit Hypothesis 1 claiming that indigenous innovation has a positive effect on the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing. Then we introduce two moderating variables (market competition and human capital) to observe the dynamics of the relationship between indigenous innovation and international competitiveness. Hypothesis 2 claims that the more intensive the industry’s market competition is, the stronger the impact of indigenous innovation on the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing is; and Hypothesis 3 claims that the higher the industry’s human capital level is, the stronger the impact of indigenous innovation on the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing is. Furthermore, we refine Hypothesis 1 from two aspects: one is the input of indigenous innovation including internal R&D investment intensity, ratio of R&D manpower, ratio of enterprises’ R&D institutions, and intensity of technology absorption; the other is the output of indigenous innovation including intellectual property output measured by the amount of patent applications per unit of R&D, and innovation income measured by the intensity of new product export sales. We posit six hypotheses from 1a to 1f concerning how different aspects of indigenous innovation affect the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing.
To test theoretical assumptions, we applied the empirical research paradigm based on the data that covers 22 sectors of China’s manufacturing over the period 2000-2015. The measurement based on the data of import and export is used as an indicator of industry’s international competitiveness, including NetExPorts ratio(NetX), Michaely index(MCY) and Revealed Symmetrical Comparative Advantage (RSCA). The level of indigenous innovation of industry is measured by six indicators including intensity of R&D investment, ratio of R&D manpower, ratio of enterprises’ R&D institutions, intensity of technology absorption, amount of patent applications per unit of R&D, and the intensity of new product export sales. The measures of indigenous innovation draw on data from China Statistical Yearbook on Science and Technology, and Statistics Yearbook on Science and Technology Activities of Industrial Enterprises in China. The data for measuring international competitiveness comes from the International Trade Statistics database of WTO, China Customs Statistics Yearbook, and the COMTRADE database of UN.
The findings of the empirical test show that indigenous innovation helps China’s manufacturing better participate in international competition. In addition, in industries with intensive market competition and high level of human capital, the relationship between indigenous innovation and international competitiveness is stronger. The specific findings of our empirical research are as follows. Firstly, hypothesis 1a, 1b and 1e are strongly supported, hypothesis 1f is weakly supported: since intensity of R&D investment, ratio of R&D manpower, amount of patent applications per unit of R&D, and the intensity of new product export sales have a positive effect on the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing. Secondly, both hypothesis 1c and 1d are not supported: because neither ratio of enterprises’ R&D institutions nor intensity of technology absorptionshow any influence on the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing. Thirdly, both Hypothesis 2 and 3 are strongly supported: since either market competition or human capital shows a positive moderating role in the relationship between indigenous innovation and the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing.
In this paper, we aim to further the understanding of how indigenous innovation affects the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing. The empirical results indicate that most indicators of indigenous innovation have a positive impact on China’s manufacturing participating in international market competition. However, many Chinese enterprises have not paid enough attention to R&D and innovation. In fact, Chinese enterprises mainly concentrate on experimental development, with a small proportion of investment in applied research and basic research. Our findings also provide references for Chinese enterprises to promote the coordination between indigenous innovation and open innovation when they move towards international market or embedding in global innovation network. In this way, our study suggests that Chinese enterprises should not rely too much on obtaining external innovation resources, because it will cause the weakness of long-term R&D investment oriented to endogenous technological capabilities. Further, we argue that Chinese enterprises should think deeply how to increase the ratio of income to the cost of indigenous innovation and manage indigenous intellectual property rights effectively.

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Design and evaluation of the enterprise green growth index system

Tang Guwen, Wang Nengmin, Zhang Meng

2019, 40(7): 47-58.

Abstract ( 241 )

Firstly, this paper reviews and analyses the existing green growth, and finds that the core of the green growth concept is to promote the organic unity of consumption, production, policy and natural resources. Green growth does not always have a positive impact. Although green growth can alleviate poverty caused by insufficient resources in developing countries, it will increase social costs. In addition, this paper argues that green growth includes four research perspectives: policies to promote the implementation of green growth model, driving forces of green growth, evaluation indicators of green growth model and social impact of green growth model. Secondly, this paper analyses the existing literature on sustainable development, green development and green growth of enterprises, defines the connotation of green growth of enterprises, and finds that the research on "green growth" mainly focuses on the macro level of national green growth, while the research on green growth of enterprises is relatively few. Only by objectively and truly evaluating the green growth status of enterprises can enterprises implement the green growth model, and then promote the national green growth at the macro level.
Based on the existing theory of green development and green growth of enterprises, combined with the compilation of China Green Development Index in 2012 and China Statistical Yearbook 2016, as well as the financial statements, social responsibility reports and sustainable development reports of enterprises, this paper analyses the key factors affecting green growth of enterprises from four aspects: environmental protection, R&D construction, financial growth and social impact. Among them, "enterprise green environmental protection index" is the index of enterprise environmental protection, that is, from the perspective of resource input, waste discharge, energy consumption changes and enterprise investment in environmental protection, to measure the process of enterprise green and environmental protection participation. "Enterprise R&D construction index" is the index of enterprise R&D construction. From the perspective of enterprise future development, it reflects enterprise’s concern and investment in product R&D and enterprise production construction by measuring enterprise’s investment in tangible assets, intangible assets and staff training. "Enterprise financial growth index" is an indicator of enterprise financial growth. Starting from accounting indicators such as business income, profits and liabilities, this paper measures the importance of enterprises to sustainable operation. "Enterprise social environment index" is an indicator of enterprise social impact. It measures the interests of stakeholders and the impact of policies on enterprises. Considering that it is more difficult to measure the impact of policies on a single enterprise, this indicator replaces the impact of policies on a single enterprise with the response of a single enterprise to policies. Finally, an enterprise green growth index system including four first-level indicators and 20 second-level indicators is constructed.
Enterprise green growth needs a set of scientific systems and methods to measure the development of green growth ability from low to high level. Based on the research results of CMM, PMMM and OPM3, this paper establishes a green growth maturity model for enterprises, which can satisfy the evaluation of green growth for enterprises, and the maturity value can measure the green growth of enterprises as a whole. After that, this paper collects the social responsibility reports of 56 state-owned enterprises in 2016, extracts the data of 2,000 listed enterprises from CathayTai’an database "social responsibility" in 2016, and finally determines the operation of 80 enterprises as the basic data after screening. At the same time, the data of China Statistical Yearbook 2017 are selected as the average level of the industry. Because some enterprises do not disclose the data of some secondary indicators directly because of competition or confidentiality considerations, this paper explains one by one the ways to deal with the secondary indicators, such as carbon dioxide emissions and comprehensive energy consumption of 10,000 yuan, environmental input ratio, enterprise construction input ratio, etc.
This paper uses the entropy method based on Min-max standardization to get the weight of each index, the higher the weight, the higher the impact of the index on the comprehensive evaluation. The results show that the first five indicators affecting the green growth of enterprises are customer satisfaction, net profit growth rate, 10,000 Yuan comprehensive energy consumption reduction percentage, main business profit rate and asset-liability rate. These five indicators can determine 74.6% of enterprise green. The maturity of color growth, and the other 15 indicators in the index system, each index weight is not greater than 0.03, not considered. The contribution of asset-liability ratio to the classification is not significant, nor is it considered. After obtaining the green growth maturity of enterprises, the K-means clustering method is used to cluster 80 companies, and the clustering results are used to divide the maturity model hierarchy. Finally, three types of enterprises are clustered, and the average value of green growth maturity of the three types of enterprises is used as the dividing line of maturity hierarchy, four levels are divided at last, which indicates that the green growth maturity of enterprises and four key indicators will be divided into four levels.
Based on the results of calculation and analysis, combined with the definition of the level of maturity model, this paper constructs the enterprise green growth maturity model and classification table. The research shows that customer satisfaction, net profit growth rate, the percentage of annual decrease in the total energy consumption of 10,000 yuan and the profit margin of main business play a decisive role in the realization of green growth of enterprises.
In the end, this paper evaluates and analyses the current situation of green growth of two enterprises in Shaanxi Province, Shaanxi Coal Chemical Industry Group Company andJinduicheng Molybdenum Industry Co. Ltd., and gives the following suggestions: the two enterprises have made some achievements in pollution control, but still need to accelerate the implementation of green growth mode; the two enterprises should meet the prerequisite of national policy. In order to achieve sustainable development and stable growth of net profit, Shaanxi Coal Industry Chemical Group Company needs to establish a more complete customer feedback and response mechanism; Jinduicheng Molybdenum Industry Co. Ltd. should reduce the main business cost through various ways on the basis of increasing R&D investment.

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A new exploration on safety innovation theory:An empirical study based on high-risk industry

Wang Guan, Zhou Xiaohu, Wu Haotian

2019, 40(7): 59-68.

Abstract ( 297 )

The continuous development of innovative science and technology makes the elements of safety management system increasingly complex and difficult to master and has been in a state of dynamic and continuous updating. Based on cognitive science theory, this paper combines safety research with innovation research, and attempts to explore a new way to improve organizational safety performance from the perspective of safety innovation. In previous safety management, most of the business operators and managers refused to innovate in the field of safety management in order to “avoid” risks, because they believed” doing less, making less mistakes". Hofmann (2003) is a pioneer to initiate safety innovation behavior in an organization from the perspective of human to promote the performance of safety. However, since then, the research on safety innovation behavior has not been profoundly studied. How to start safety innovation behavior and whether safety innovation behavior affects organizational safety performance have not been solved yet. Therefore, this study focuses on team safety innovation behavior and explores how to initiate safety innovation behavior within enterprises.
Specifically, this paper puts forward a model of organizational safety performance affected by safety innovation intention through safety innovation behavior. Safety innovation intention represents the motivation and intensity of innovation willingness to work in a safer way to enhance safety. Safety performance refers to themeasurable results of an organization’s safety management system, which is related to the safety risk control of an organization, based on the enterprise’s safety policies and objectives. Only when the team employees have a strong desire for safety innovation, will they actively collect all kinds of information about improving safety level, be more sensitive to safety innovation resources and integrate them, so as to promote the development of team safety performance. Safety innovation resources also have an important impact on safety behavior and safety performance. There are 4 dimensions of safety innovation resources: (1) human capital, it can reduce the incidence of accidents caused by human factors in enterprise safety production, and improve the performance of enterprise safety management by absorbing and cultivating employees with safety awareness and safety capabilities (such as safety skills, responsibility, risk awareness, etc.) (2) equipment and technology, they can reduce the error rate of human factors in production process by assisting and early warning, and provide technical guarantee for safety production (3) management and organizational resources, they play a leading role in the safety production of enterprises, formulating strategic plans for safety, carrying out total quality management for the whole process, and strengthening system safety (4) safety culture, as a common consensus on safety innovation within the organization, safety culture can discover the potential dangers in safety management in time through the constraints of employees’ behavior so as to improve the safety performance of enterprises. The overall safety intention of the team can promote the safety innovation behavior of employees and improve the safety performance of the team; abundant safety innovation resources can also provide more opportunities for team members to conduct safety innovation-related behavior, and further help the team to improve safety performance.
This paper took chemical and civil explosive enterprises as the research objects. Their business included blasting engineering, production of explosive materials, chemical industry, mining and other high-risk industries. The respondents were senior managers and safety specialists of enterprises. In this study, 32 teams from 21 enterprises across 7 provinces were randomly selected. A total of 460 questionnaires were distributed, among which 442 were valid, and the validity of the questionnaires was 96%. In this paper, Amos22 and SPSS21.0 were used as statistical analysis software to analyze and process the data. The results show that: (1) employee’s safety innovation intention is an important factor affecting the internal safety innovation behavior; (2) the support of organizational safety resources will also promote the internal safety innovation behavior; (3) safety innovation behavior plays an intermediary role between safety innovation intention/safety innovation resources and organizational safety performance. Similarly, safety innovation intention and safety innovation resources can respectively promote organizational safety performance through safety innovation behavior.
This study has important theoretical and practical significance in the current environment. Firstly, it is necessary to enhance the safety innovation intention of managers and employees. Relatively rigid system, backward thinking, traditional production and operation mode will inevitably lead to severe security problems in high-risk industries. To enhance the safety innovation intention of managers and employees in high-risk industries is to treat safety issues from a dynamic perspective and to actively put forward new ideas in the face of safety issues. Secondly, we should strengthen the resources for safety innovation: to improve the safety of production process through advanced production technology, safer production materials and equipment; to make effective changes in management system through continuous optimization of the system; to strengthen the construction of organizational safety innovation. Through the penetration of cultural concepts, managers and employees can meet a common understanding of safety innovation, which has a positive impact on their attitude and behavior in safety performance. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first one that considers a safety innovation model. The support for the mediating role of safety innovation behavior not only adds to our understanding of the role of safety behavior in relationship between safety innovation intention and safety performance, but also implies the complicated role of behavior plays between the intention-performance relationships in safety area. We hope the supportive results reported in our study will stimulate further research in areas of safety innovation intention,safety innovation behavior and safety performance to help meet the unanticipated challenges now and in the future.

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Innovation integration path of “Blockchain +” business model

Song Lifeng, Qi Dawei, Song Yuanfang

2019, 40(7): 69-77.

Abstract ( 455 )

The researches in the application field of blockchain mainly focus on the combination of blockchain technology and traditional industry. It mainly discusses how blockchain can change the value creation mode of traditional industries, that is the "blockchain+" business model innovation. From the beginning of the upsurge of blockchain research in 2015, scholars have given it too much expectation and significance, abstracted many concepts that can be used to remedy the existing drawbacks of traditional industries from it, conceived the path to support business model innovation in various fields, and given it various legitimacy.
There are a lot of contradictions in these research results, such as divergences in trend prediction of the same industry, conflicts in innovative ways of change in the same field, disputes over whetherblockchain can be applied in a certain business model and the necessity of their application. Specifically, after the "blockchain +" business model innovation of Internet platform, whether the platform still has value or not; in the process of "blockchain +" business model innovation in financial industry, whether it should adopt centralization, partial centralization or de-centralization mode; in the process of "blockchain +" business model innovation in big data industry, the privacy issues should be completely concealed, semi-public or selective public.
The reason for the above phenomenon is that the research on "blockchain +" business model innovation is not clear about the development stage of blockchain technology, the concept characteristics of blockchain, the cycle stage of blockchain technology development and the direction of "blockchain +" business model change, which makes the whole research field disordered and difficult for the researchers to get further development. That is because in the process of deriving business model innovation from the blockchain perspective, the existing researches confused the three categories: blockchain technology, which supports blockchain network through program, coding and hardware, blockchain characteristics, which are different from traditional network construction protocols, and blockchain concepts, the humanistic thought that is contained in the application of blockchain.
On the basis of sorting out the boundaries and relationships among these three concepts, this paper makes a comparative analysis of the innovation paths of the three "blockchain +" shared economic business models. It finds that block chain technology is a systematic integration of information technology, which contains a wide range of technologies, and the specific subdivision technologies under each type of technology are different, and the stages of technology development are also different. The effects of the combination and cooperation of the technologies applied in blockchain are also affected by a certain technology or the overall stage of technology development. It is the technical types of blockchain integration and the configuration formed during the development phase determined the new features of the business model that emerged when combined with specific areas. These characteristics are generally expressed as data rights, privacy, and data costs, those are the "blockchain +" business model innovation points.
This paper chooses the different innovative paths or opposite innovative results in the study of "blockchain +" shared economy business model as the cases to discuss. By comparing the differences in the research on the role of Internet platform in the shared economy under blockchain, this paper explores the integration path of "blockchain +" business model innovation, and finds out the reasons for the contradictions through the integration path. Comparing with the business model of "blockchain +" shared economy, we can find that there are two kinds of drawbacks that are difficult to solve in shared economy: data rights and privacy. Based on this, there are obvious divergences in the research of "blockchain +" shared economy business model in the aspects of data rights, privacy rights and platform roles innovation path, which can be summarized as compensatory innovation path, substitutional innovation path and subversive innovation path. Compensatory innovation, in general, makes up for the deficiencies and loopholes in the existing shared economy business model through the technological advantages of blockchain; substitutional innovation, which weakens most of the role of Internet platform in the traditional shared economy, then evolves into a supply block of integrated services assisted by supervision, technical support and trade, whose value is mainly reflected in reducing the transaction of shared economy; subversive innovation, completely subverts the role of Internet platform as the central block. The value-creating parties of shared economy operate their own blocks independently. Other supporting assistants, such as search service, verification service and technical support service, also participate in the new shared economy in the mode of independent blocks.
Further research found that the direction of “blockchain+” business model innovation, such as breaking monopoly, independence and win-win, the concepts that blockchain created fit with each other. It is concluded that the integration path of "blockchain+" business model innovation is to combine appropriate technology configuration of blockchain with business model in application field under specific circumstances, to optimize and innovate specific business model, and then to the two-way influence of blockchain concept and business model concept. In this process, the three factors evolve in the interaction, and finally form a dynamic change cycle.
Finally, this paper makes an analysis from four aspects: technology, culture, ability and stakeholders. Firstly, it is the development of related technology, including the related technology of building blockchain and the software and hardware technology of supporting blockchain. Secondly, we need to consider the differences of cultural environment, that is, the consensus and law of the right of choice, data right, privacy right and so on. Thirdly, we need to consider the development level of basic social skills, such as the use of the Internet for searching, trading, communication and so on. It is common to take photos, navigate, and connect online and offline through mobile devices. Fourthly, the participation of stakeholders will affect the value creation orientation and value distribution mode of "blockchain +" business model innovation. It provides a theoretical framework for the study of “blockchain+” business models in different fields, and also points the direction for the development of blockchain enterprises.

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Impact of government R&D investment on enterprise innovation performance—An empirical study based on Shanghai high-tech enterprises

Ye Mingque, Wang Kunqing

2019, 40(7): 78-86.

Abstract ( 290 )

Innovation presents a new trend of development under the current scientific and technological revolution. Innovation promotes economic development, mass entrepreneurship, innovation and other topics on innovation have been the focus of national and regional attention. Innovation is the first driving force for development and the strategic support for building a modern economic system. With the rapid development of economy, innovation is the main force for high-tech enterprises to gain competitive advantage. Whether or not innovation directly determines the survival and development of high-tech enterprises. For high-tech enterprises, R&D activities are not only the cornerstone of innovation ability, but also the core of enhancing the technological and technological advantages of high-tech enterprises. However, there are many factors affecting the innovation activities of enterprises. On the one hand, for individuals, enterprises have many individual characteristics, such as enterprise size, enterprise nature, enterprise age, etc. On the other hand, because of market failure such as knowledge spillover, the innovation expenditure of high-tech enterprises will be lower than the optimal level of society. As the representative of public welfare, the innovation activities of high-tech enterprises can not be separated from the government’s scientific research investment. Therefore, the impact of government R&D investment on enterprise innovation has always been the focus of policy and theoretical circles. Based on this background, this paper comprehensively studies the impact of government investment in scientific research on innovation performance of high-tech enterprises from both enterprises and government, and the difference of ownership in its impact.
Firstly, this paper reviews the research status at home and abroad, combs the relevant theories of government investment in scientific research, enterprise ownership and enterprise innovation, and summarizes and analyses the impact of government R&D investment on enterprise innovation performance. It is found that the research on the relationship between government R&D investment and enterprise innovation mainly focuses on two aspects. On the one hand, it studies the impact on the enterprise’s own scientific research investment. Based on different theoretical perspectives, there are mainly three kinds of relationships: complementary relationship, substitutional relationship and no significant relationship. On the other hand, it is to study the impact of government R&D investment on innovation output or efficiency, mainly to test whether government R&D investment is conducive to enterprises to have more innovation output and improve enterprise innovation efficiency. Most studies have shown that government R&D investment can break the restriction of enterprise R&D capital, make enterprises have more output in innovation, help enterprises improve innovation ability and improve innovation efficiency; but some scholars have put forward the paradox of R&D growth, believing that the increasing R&D investment has not turned into ideal innovation output, besides the market failure mentioned above, there is still room for improvement. As a kind of factor input, R&D investment follows the law of diminishing marginal return, that is, when R&D investment reaches a certain limit, marginal cost will exceed marginal return, and increasing R&D investment is not conducive to maximizing profits.
In view of the particularity of China’s high-tech enterprises, because of the different nature of enterprise ownership, their innovation performance with the help of government R&D investment is also different. This is mainly due to the differences in resource endowment, operating environment and financing difficulty underdifferent enterprise ownership structure, which makes enterprises present different R&D incentives, innovative ways and technological capabilities, and ultimately leads to innovation performance. There are some differences in effectiveness. According to the theory of resource dependence, state-owned enterprises have obvious advantages in resource endowment. They are often controlled by local or local governments. When faced with losses, state-owned enterprises will soon receive subsidies, tax relief or other compensation measures from local governments. But the principal-agent theory points out that the long-term separation of ownership and management rights of state-owned enterprises, the absence of enterprise owners, the lack of incentive, supervision and accountability mechanisms, even if they enjoy more innovative resources and government preferences, will result in double losses of production efficiency and innovation efficiency. Therefore, the incentive effect of government subsidies on innovation of state-owned enterprises will be weakened or even have a negative impact. On the contrary, non-state-owned enterprises do not have highly internalized production systems, redundancy of personnel and other issues. They have greater autonomy and flexibility in innovation activities, can quickly make decisions and implement innovation activities, and have better innovation effect. According to the literature review, three hypotheses are put forward: H1: enterprises with government R&D investment have more incentive effect than inhibition effect, and government R&D investment has significant promotion effect on enterprise innovation performance; H2: government R&D investment can be beneficial to enterprise innovation within a reasonable range; H3: state-owned enterprises will weaken the impact of government R&D investment on enterprise innovation performance.
In view of these three hypotheses, this paper takes high-tech enterprises as the research object, carries out a deeper statistical analysis on innovation input, innovation output and innovation performance of Shanghai high-tech enterprises from the micro-level; then elaborates the theoretical model and data sources, through empirical analysis of the impact of government R&D investment and innovation performance of Shanghai high-tech enterprises, and joins the ownership of enterprises. The regulation function of the system is analyzed and the corresponding conclusions are drawn.
This paper uses the negative binomial regression of zero inflation, and finds that: 1) For Chinese high-tech enterprises, government R&D investment can restrain their own scientific research investment, but it also has a significant incentive effect on enterprise innovation performance, and its incentive effect covers its restraint effect. Generally speaking, government R&D investment has a significant promotion on innovation performance of high-tech enterprises. 2) The government R&D investment is not a simple linear relationship to the innovation performance of high-tech enterprises, but has a suitable "interval" and has an overall "inverted U" effect. That is to say, when the government provides scientific research funding to enterprises, too high or too low scientific research funding rate will inhibit the innovation of high-tech enterprises; 3) The impact of government R&D investment on innovation performance of high-tech enterprises with different ownership will be different. The government R&D investment of state-owned high-tech enterprises has little effect on the innovation performance of high-tech enterprises. On the contrary, for private enterprises, foreign-funded enterprises and limited companies, appropriate government R&D investment will promote the innovation of enterprises.

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Influencing factors of the innovation capability of Beijing modern manufacturing industry under the low carbon economy

Tang Xiaowen, Xiang Nan, Li Yuchen

2019, 40(7): 87-96.

Abstract ( 253 )

Under the low carbon economy, this paper studies the relevant factors that affect the modern manufacturing industry in Beijing during the past ten years. This paper draws the following conclusions: (1) The innovation capability of Beijing modern manufacturing industry is constantly improving. The innovation capability of electronic equipment manufacturing industry (computer, communication, etc.) is higher than that of other industries and the transportation equipment manufacturing industry (Railway, ship, aerospace, etc.) and automobile manufacturing industry also play an important role in innovation. (2) In terms of the influencing factors of innovation capability, the investment of scientific research funds is the most important factor to improve the innovation capability of modern manufacturing industry in Beijing. The input of scientific research personnel, i.e. labor force, will also play a positive role in promoting innovation capability, but energy input will have a negative impact on innovation capability, and the impact is significant. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward some countermeasures to improve the innovative ability of modern manufacturing industry in Beijing under the low-carbon economy, including increasing investment in scientific research funds and scientific and technological personnel. By doing so, energy consumption intensity can be reduced, and energy-saving technology are greatly developed. Further, low-carbon development, and the industrial structure of modern manufacturing industry in Beijing is optimized and low-carbon economy is achieved.
In view of the above research conclusions, we put forward in this paper the following strategies in upgrading the innovation capability of Beijing modern manufacturing industry:
Firstly, the government and enterprises should continue to increase investment in scientific research, especially in basic and strategic research. At present, the R&D expenditure of modern manufacturing industry is not adequate, and investment will become an important factor restricting the independent innovation of modern manufacturing enterprises in Beijing. Inadequate input will inevitably affect the output of independent innovation.Lack of independent intellectual property rights will inevitably lead to lack of research and development of new technologies and products in modern manufacturing industry. The research finds that the investment of scientific research funds contributes most to the growth of industry innovation production capacity. Strengthening investment in scientific research is helpful to transformation of modern manufacturing industry, introduction of technology, improvement of digestion and absorption capacity, and can actively promote the technological progress of modern manufacturing industry.
Secondly, Beijing’s modern manufacturing industry needs to focus on low-carbon development, vigorously develop energy-saving technologies, and constantly reduce the intensity of energy consumption. The low-carboncapability of Beijing modern manufacturing industry is the key to the technological progress and market competition and, therefore, create new competitive advantages. In recent years, the total energy consumption of Beijing’s modern manufacturing industry has declined significantly. Traditional manufacturing industry has been the main energy consumer of manufacturing industry, but its proportion of energy consumption has decreased. The total energy consumption of modern manufacturing industry has an upward trend, but the overall energy consumption efficiency has raised.
Thirdly, we should further increase the input of scientific and technological talents and build up a team of high-tech talents in Beijing’s modern manufacturing industry. The essence of innovation drive is the talent drive. In 2016, the total number of scientific research personnel in modern manufacturing industry accounted for more than 80% of the total manufacturing industry. With the increase of scientific research personnel in various industries, it is necessary to further increase the investment of high-tech personnel in modern manufacturing enterprises, especially first-class high-tech talents, create incentive policies for scientific research personnel, and stimulate the enthusiasm and creativity of all kinds of talents.
Finally, we should optimize the industrial structure of Beijing modern manufacturing industry and give priority to the development of high-end intelligent computer communication equipment. On this basis, build Beijing modern intelligent control and intelligent manufacturing system, give play to the radiation driving role of the industry. Further, we should accelerate the construction of industry informatization, and transform modern manufacturing industry with information technology, and reconstruct industry value chain and whole business chain with Internet thinking. By upgrading the investment structure and eliminating backward production capacity, the industrial structure can be optimized, the investment of enterprises which is highly dependent on resources and technology with low content and relatively serious pollution will be gradually reduced, the investment and R&D investment in technology-intensive industries, especially in high-tech industries, will be increased, and high-end products will be developed to promote industrial technological upgrading.
The above conclusions are developed by using the improved Cobb Douglas production function to analyze the influencing factors of Beijing’s modern manufacturing innovation capability under the low-carbon situation. We expand the research perspective of manufacturing innovation capability evaluation, which has theoretical and practical significance to guide China’s modern manufacturing industry regarding the improvement of its innovation capability under the low-carbon situation. However, there are still some deficiencies in the study of specific measures to further enhance innovation capability. In our future work, the scientific decision-making basis of innovation capability and low-carbon development capability of modern manufacturing industry in Beijing will be thoroughly studied by using model simulation method, and the decision-making optimization model of low-carbon development of modern manufacturing industry in Beijing will be constructed to carry out mid-and long-term simulation, in order to put forward reasonable and feasible development path and implementation plan.

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Function evaluation system and governance mechanism of intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem

Tang Linjia, Zheng Weiwei, Chi Renyong

2019, 40(7): 97-105.

Abstract ( 450 )

Manufacturing is not only the main part of the national economy, but also the foundation of the country, the foundation of a strong country and the instrument for rejuvenating the country. In 2002, China became a major manufacturing country in the world, but it has not yet developed into a manufacturing powerhouse. China’s manufacturing industry is large but not strong. There are four problems and challenges: weak independent innovation capability, outstanding product quality problems, low resource utilization efficiency, and weak strategic emerging industries. The new round of industrial technology changes and the transformation of China’s economic development mode have formed a historic convergence, especially to provide significant opportunities for implementing innovation-driven development strategies. The international frontier dynamics show that building an innovative ecosystem is a key issue in the process of intelligent manufacturing industrialization. Since 2015, China has also successively issued a series of policies indicating that China has upgraded the industrial innovation of intelligent manufacturing to optimize the innovation ecosystem to the national strategic level.
In addition, according to the literature, newspapers and related books, the article combs the developmenthistory of the smart manufacturing strategy of the United States, Germany and China. Among them, the United States started the earliest. In 1992, it implemented a new technology policy. In 2011, smart manufacturing was listed as a key development target. Only one year later, the first intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem was constructed. The development of intelligent manufacturing in Germany is located in the second phalanx of the world. It started slightly later than the United States. The company represented by Siemens brought intelligent manufacturing from the laboratory to actual production, making the Berg factory a model of “Industry 4.0”. As early as 1993, China established the major project of the Natural Science Foundation “Key Technology of Intelligent Manufacturing System”, but the overall development is relatively slow, lagging behind developed countries in Europe and America, and located in the third array.
Through a large number of literature readings, this paper finds that the existing research has the following characteristics: First, most scholars focus on the main function of the innovation ecosystem to influence the upgrading of the innovation main technology, and do not carry out the functions of other auxiliary units and the system inorganic environment. Second, scholars’ discussion of the innovation ecosystem focuses on theoretical expansion, and few studies integrate relevant theories and methods with actual industrial upgrading. Third, scholars carry out the functional structure of the innovation ecosystem from different perspectives and dimensions.However, analyses have not yet been systematically combed, lacking a complete functional evaluation system. In view of the shortcomings of the current development of traditional manufacturing industry in China, the article introduces the ideas and methods of the innovation ecosystem, and solves the four major problems by constructing an intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem.
Intelligent manufacturing has three dimensional scopes, from intelligent production lines, intelligent workshops, smart factories,smart connected production to intelligent industrial systems. The intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem reflects different technical levels, functional contents and system structures at different levels. The main content structure can be divided into rule layer, behavior layer and resource layer. Among them, the behavioral layer is composed of R&D-type enterprises, universities, and technology intermediaries, and forms a technical network through mutual cooperation or competitive behavior. The Institute of Technology and the core enterprises constitute the “core layer of ecology”. As a leader in the industry, star companies play a role in the technological transformation of the intelligent manufacturing industry. The organic body of the rule layer is the government department. As a promoter of strategic emerging technologies, it leads the construction of the “rule layer ecology” of the innovation ecosystem. The government departments cooperate with industry associations, professional think tank institutions, and demonstration enterprises to formulate and improve supporting policies, system norms, industry standards, and standards systems, and formulate forward-looking development strategies for the innovation ecosystem. The infrastructure and inorganic environment form the resource layer of the innovation ecosystem. The technical environment of intelligent manufacturing includes basic research knowledge such as advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, big data optimization decision-making, and the construction of basic technical equipment such as the Internet, numerical control equipment, and robot technology.
Based on previous scholars’ theoretical development of the innovation ecosystem and the research of intelligent manufacturing industry, this paper has divided the functional elements of the intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem into four modules: the innovation ability of the organic subject, the service ability of the auxiliary organization, and the support of the inorganic environment.System development capabilities and the independent innovation capability of the innovation ecosystem require not only the assessment of the creation process of the technology or products in the laboratory, but also the process of improvement, application and diffusion of new technologies and new products. The innovation ecosystem has the basic characteristics of the ecosystem. The innovation process of the organic body within the system is determined not only by its own innovation consciousness, innovation input, but also by the service capabilities and inorganic environmental support capabilities of other auxiliary institutions within the system. The construction of the auxiliary organization and the quality of service affect the innovation capability of the entire system. Intelligent manufacturing is a top equipment manufacturing industry, and technical intermediaries and technical associations are its main auxiliary institutions. The inorganic environment is mainly determined by policy elements and economic factors, providing a stable and suitable place for system innovation. The intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem is an organization with sustainable development and dynamic growth characteristics. The development capability of the system determines the degree of industrial technology change in the future. The openness of the system is one of the main influencing factors of its future innovation ability. The talent reserve is the living force of the system, and it is an indispensable element to play its function. The system culture needs the inter-subjects, the subject and the environment within the system. Elements such as experience of long-term contact are elements that other systems cannot replicate. Based on the functional analysis of the intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem above, a total of 27 indicators were selected based on the principles of comprehensiveness, comparability and operability to establish a functional evaluation system for the intelligent manufacturing innovation ecosystem. Finally, the article pays attention to the development strategy, functional structure, behavioral norms, and environmental optimization, and proposes corresponding governance mechanisms: system development strategy governance, system function structure governance, member behavior normative governance, and innovation environment optimization governance.

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A comparative study of the area of innovation network gatekeeper: Taking the field of telecommunications as an example

Dai Yong, Wang Shihui

2019, 40(7): 106-118.

Abstract ( 235 )

With the in-depth development of open innovation practices, collaboration has become the primary means by which organizations and regions seek new technologies and knowledge, but organizational or regional boundaries often become key factors that constrain innovation synergies. In this case, the gatekeeper usually plays an important role in the absorption and transmission of knowledge. This paper firstly adopts the combination of multidimensional proximity theory and social network analysis method of cooperative innovation network, selects the telecom field as the specific research object, and collects the cooperation between the nine major urban groups by collecting the cooperation patent data of China’s telecommunications field from 1985 to 2017. The cooperative innovation network performs layered processing, constructs the gatekeeper recognition model, and re-characterizes the gatekeeper structure. Secondly, a measurement model is constructed to quantify the contribution of the gatekeeper. Thirdly, through cluster analysis and comparison, the method of analysis explores the relationship between the role of gatekeepers in different regions, the characteristics of internal and external links, and the degree of contribution. Based on the above research, this paper finally provides several regional policy recommendations.
The empirical results show that: (1) There are a certain number of gatekeepers in the nine major urban agglomerations in China, and the gatekeepers have a more balanced distribution ratio in their respective urban agglomerations. By analyzing the quantity and the strength of internal and external connections, it is found that the gatekeepers of different urban groups differ greatly in these two aspects. It can be seen that there is no necessary connection between the status of the gatekeepers in each urban agglomeration and the level of economic development. Therefore, it is still necessary to comprehensively consider the type characteristics of the gatekeepers themselves and make final choices according to the actual conditions of each region; (2) The degree of gatekeepers contribution varies according to the specific conditions of the urban agglomeration, but in terms of role composition, most of the contributors in most urban agglomerations are colleges and universities. In other urban agglomerations other than Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the type of gatekeepers and the mode of contribution are relatively simple. Except for the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration, the others are university-led. Relatively, the types of gatekeepers and contribution models of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration are more diversified. In addition to colleges and universities, some enterprises and scientific research institutions have made great contributions to the urban agglomeration as gatekeepers; (3) the contribution index of two-way active and outward-active gatekeepers in contributing to the cooperation and innovation of urban agglomerations is the highest. However, due to the differences in geographic location and development planning of various urban agglomerations, it will also indirectly affect the contribution of gatekeepers within the group. After exploring the types and contributions of gatekeepers in the three types of urban agglomerations, it is found that gatekeepers with high external contact strength or balanced internal and external contact strengths play a more significant role in the collaborative innovation activities between the subjects within the urban group and the external entities.
The theoretical contributions of this research are as follows: firstly, the geographic proximity and cognitive proximity are embedded into the social network analysis, and the gatekeeper recognition model is constructed. Based on the multidimensional proximity, the cooperative innovation network is rationally layered. Through the combination of multi-layer sub-network interaction and intermediary centrality, this study improved the single judgment method for the gatekeeper, making the gatekeeper’s identification method more comprehensive and scientific; Secondly, according to the difference of the proportion of internal and external connections, the difference of the gatekeeper’s contact characteristics is further explored, and the behavioral characteristics of the three types of gatekeepers: outward-looking, two-way active and inward-active are defined. Combined with the roles of universities, enterprises, scientific research institutions, governments and related institutions, the types of gatekeepers are divided into multiple dimensions and in more detail. Thirdly, this study constructs the gatekeeper contribution measurement model, and describes the gatekeeper type and contribution index between different regions through cluster analysis, and compares the specific reasons why the gatekeeper’s contribution differs due to the development level of the urban agglomeration. Finally, although this paper is based on the research on the data of the gatekeepers of the cooperative innovation network in China’s telecom industry, the methods and ideas adopted in the paper can also be transplanted and copied to gatekeepers or intermediaries of the regional cooperative innovation network in other industries.
The practical significance of this research is that the study of regional gatekeepers can provide practical reference for government management organizations or policy research institutions in different regions and clusters, namely: how to cultivate and develop future types of gatekeepers who are more suitable for the development of regional or cluster innovation networks to improve the contribution of gatekeepers to regional innovation? First of all, the gatekeeper is the hub for establishing cooperative and innovative relationships between regions or clusters. When building a cooperative innovation network, the proportion of gatekeepers can be increased according to actual conditions. Secondly, each region or cluster has its own particularity in the speed and path of development. Therefore, the cultivation of the gatekeepers within the group should also be matched to better promote the flow of knowledge between the subject and the external subject, and thus better promote inter-regional cooperation and innovation activities. Thirdly, in the process of forming the gatekeeper’s main body, the balance of the role composition should be enhanced. China is vigorously advocating the collaborative innovation system of enterprises-university-research institute, and the status of enterprises in innovation is increasing. It is necessary to encourage and promote more enterprises to assume the role of the gatekeeper of the regional innovation network, so that while improving their technical capabilities, they can enhance the overall innovation performance of the region by continuously absorbing and transmitting new knowledge from the outside world.

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The spatial-temporal relationship and interaction between venture capital and innovation

Lin Xiao, Xu Wei, Yang Fan

2019, 40(7): 119-130.

Abstract ( 217 )

Innovation has become a fundamental driving force for enterprise development and regional economic transformation and upgrading, and venture capital is an important supporting factor for promoting innovation. Sharing similar properties, both venture capital and innovation are high-level economic activities that combine high risk and high returns. Different from ordinary producer services, venture capital also concerns the business content of “underlying” enterprises in terms of financial communication, industrial technology, strategic consulting and enterprise management. It is often involved in the innovation and production process of the company because of a keen sense of the market prospects for corporate innovation. Therefore, venture capital and innovation may be synchronic in the time dimension.
In the era of knowledge economy, innovation is becoming more open and inclusive. Because of the increasing intensity of knowledge information interaction and spillover between different innovation subjects, innovation activities often exhibit characteristics of spatial agglomeration. The co-location represents the spatial and temporal interaction between venture capital and innovation. At present, innovation has become the core driving force for China’s economic transformation and upgrading. The Chinese venture capital industry started late but developed quite rapidly. Understanding the relationship and mechanism of venture capital and innovation correctly helps to provide useful guidance for relevant practices, and it is of great significance to promote effective combination and benign interaction between the two.
Based on reviewing the relevant literature, this paper proposed a theoretical framework on how venture capital interacts with innovation through two types of effects. The ‘treatment effect’ is the effect of venture capital on innovation. It includes two kinds of influence paths. One is through the financial mechanism related to capital, and the other is through the value-added services that are not necessarily related to capital. The “selection effect” refers to the effect of innovation on venture capital. Innovation reveals explicitly the investment value of innovative enterprises and hence is the signal released by enterprises to attract venture capital. The professionals at venture capital institutions constantly search for and decode such signals, thus effectively alleviating the problem of information asymmetry in venture capital market. A set of five hypotheses are proposed to test empirically these possible interactive effects between venture capital and innovation. Enterprise innovation capacity is measured using the number of patent authorization and acceptance. Both the amount and event of venture capital investment are used to measure the magnitude and frequency of venture capital investment activity. A 1995- 2014 panel data set is established to test the relationship between venture capital and innovation at the provincial level using panel data model.
The results show that the correlation between the amount of venture capital and R&D expenditure is not significant, implying that venture capital does not directly affect innovation through capital investment in R&D activities. The effect of venture capital on innovative enterprises is mainly through non-R&D activities. A further test indicates enterprises that obtain venture capital would inhibit innovation. Because venture capital focuses on non-R&D activities, it pays more attention to how to cash in timely the existing innovative achievements, which bring about the pressure onto innovative enterprises and make them to prioritize the return on capital, capital withdrawal and IPO listing. However, the number of venture capital investment cases has a positive impact on innovation, implying that venture capital promotes innovation by providing value-added services to enterprises. The occurrence of each venture capital investment event is a process of knowledge spillover and information sharing between the investor and the invested party, which may help to improve the knowledge, technology and management level of innovative enterprise. Therefore, there were two kinds of reverse action paths in the process of venture capital influencing firm innovation. The focus of previous research was mainly to verify the effect of venture capital on innovation through different samples. However, this paper does not simply draw a simple conclusion on whether venture capital promotes innovation. Based on theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence, the findings of the paper show that the effect of venture capital on innovation, which can be promotion, suppression or neutrality, depends on the net effect of two types of interaction, illustrating the reason of the existing contradictory conclusions in the literature. In addition, the authorized patents, truly representing the level of enterprise innovation, has a significant positive impact on the number of venture capital cases, but it is not significantly associated with the amount of venture capital investment. The result confirms the theoretical hypotheses constructed in this paper.
In short, this paper explores the spatio-temporal synergic relationship between venture capital investment and innovation in China during the period of 1995-2014 and investigates the intrinsic mechanism of the interaction between them using panel regression model. The research results show that venture capital has “functional effect” on innovation. There are two types of functional paths, which are achieved through the financing function and value-added service function of venture capital, respectively. However, venture capital excludes itself from R&D activities of innovative enterprises and the profitability seeking behavior of venture capital can also suppress firm innovation. While value-added services by venture capital can effectively promote innovation, the ultimate net impact of "functional effect" depends on the strengths and weaknesses of these two paths. Innovation has a "selection effect" on venture capital, indicating that innovation is an effective screening signal for venture capital to enter. It can attract venture capital investment to occur. However, it has no direct relationship with the amount of venture capital investment.
This paper makes several important contributions to the literature. Theoretically, the research framework and path analysis proposed in this paper help to strengthen understanding the interaction between venture capital and innovation, which provides a theoretical basis and an analytical perspective for future research. In terms of methodology, by distinguishing the number of venture capital cases and the amount of venture capital investment, and differentiating between patent acceptance and patent authorization, the empirical models effectively reveal the different roles and impacts in the interaction between venture capital and innovation. Practically, the conclusions of this research have important policy implications for regional and corporate development. At the macro scale, local governments should actively promote regional innovation capabilities that then attract venture capital and promote the development of local venture capital. At the same time, it needs to avoid the single use of the amount of venture capital to evaluate the effectiveness of venture capital. Rather, more attention needs to be paid to the innovation cultivation and incubation functions that are often hidden behind venture capital so that a positive interaction between venture capital and innovation can be established. In addition, it is necessary to restrain the "floating mood" of venture capital to a certain extent. Venture capital should be encouraged to participate more in R&D activities and play to its comprehensive role in promoting innovation. At the micro level, companies should pay attention to enhancing their ability to innovate. In cooperation with venture capital institutions, we should not only focus on the scale of financing of investors, but also pay attention to their industry experience and specialization, and whether they can provide useful value-added services.

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No resource or no motivation? Government subsidies, green innovation and incentive strategy selection

Wang Xu, Wang Fei

2019, 40(7): 131-139.

Abstract ( 532 )

With the overloading development of natural resources and the emergence of environmental problems, Chinese manufacturing industry needs to transform into an innovation-driven and green development model. Different from other forms of innovation, green innovation has positive significance for enterprises to cultivate competitive advantages and reduce environmental externalities, showing dual value effect. Thus, from the perspective of sustainable development, green innovation has become a crucial key to advance Chinese manufacturing industry to transform.
In order to alleviate the innovative financing constraints faced by enterprises, the state and local governments began to focus on supporting green innovation through fiscal and tax policy. However, over-reliance on the exogenous influence of science and technology policies and neglecting the endogenous incentive mechanism of enterprises can easily lead to the failure of innovation smoothing and the distortion of public resource allocation. In this respect, this article from the both level of fiscal policy and corporate governance mainly analyzes the role of government subsidies and executive incentives upon green innovation. The issues discussed in this paper are new ones that have not been completely addressed by existing research. At the same time, manufacturing enterprises have a strong dependence on the dual value effect of green innovation, so this paper selects manufacturing enterprises listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets as research samples. Based on the perspective of corporate governance, this paper reveals the impact of compensation incentive, reputation incentive and incentive portfolio strategy on the relationship between government subsidies and green innovation.
The research shows that although the green innovation activities are in line with the expected benefits of local governments on economic benefits and environmental performance, due to the existence of the principal-agent problem, the smoothing effect of fiscal and tax policy on green innovation depends on the innovative compensation effect generated by the executive incentive mechanism. Specifically, the findings of this paper suggest three main conclusions. Firstly, the innovative compensation effect of executive compensation incentive can improve the smoothing effect of fiscal and tax subsidy policy upon green innovation. Compensation incentive can force executives to break the low-end lock on the original technology and try to achieve performance goals through innovation. The dual value effect of green innovation is an important way for senior executives to achieve the goal of compensation incentive contracts. The monetary compensation provided by compensation incentive can not only improve the imbalance of innovation risk-taking and innovation income acquisition of executives, but also effectively improve the efficiency of executives’ allocation of innovative resources such as government subsidies. Therefore, under the influence of salary incentive, senior executives have sufficient motivation to invest the obtained fiscal and tax subsidies into green innovation to achieve a win-win situation between personal income and organizational income.
Secondly, executives cannot obtain innovative compensation from reputation incentive contracts, and reputation incentive has no significant impact on the relationship between fiscal and tax subsidies and green innovation. The psychological effects of reputation incentive, such as psychological satisfaction, social identity and personal achievement, are the direct incentives to motivate executives to work hard. However, since the public and stakeholders tend to attribute green innovation to the innovation decisions that enterprises are forced to make to obtain profits or reduce regulatory pressure, senior executives cannot accumulate reputation through green innovation. In addition, green process innovation cannot be transformed into economic value in a short period of time, and even squeezes the R&D investment of products, which reduces the positive expectations of the market. It is difficult for the public to have a “dominant” accumulation of executive reputation. Therefore, for green innovation, the innovation compensation effect brought by reputation incentive is very limited.
Finally, the complementary relationship between compensation incentive and reputational incentive creates an innovative compensation effect of incentive portfolio. In the real decision-making situation, senior executives are usually affected by the integration of various incentive mechanisms. And under the condition of moderate compensation incentive intensity, fiscal and tax subsidies can realize the optimal driving effect upon green innovation. Compared with the non-monetary utility such as psychological satisfaction and sense of accomplishment brought by reputation, monetary utility takes priority in the level of executives’ psychological appeals. Therefore, under the condition of satisfying the executives’ demands for money utility, the reputation incentive mechanism can play an effective incentive role. Since the risk of green innovation is distributed in multiple links, higher monetary returns are needed to compensate for the risk taken by senior executives. At the same time, too low salary incentives will cause executives to abandon green innovation because they cannot obtain sufficient monetary compensation. With the increase of compensation incentive intensity, the economic benefits of senior executives will increase, and senior executives will pursue the psychological satisfaction and sense of achievement brought by reputation. However, too high compensation incentive intensity may lead to conservative investment decisions by senior executives who cannot meet the incentive conditions in the contract. Only when the salary incentive intensity is moderate, can compensation and reputation incentive play an effective complementary role, and stimulate the allocation efficiency of senior executives to strategic resources such as government subsidies.
This paper focuses on the smoothing effect of government subsidies on green innovation, and on the basis of analyzing the incentive effects of compensation incentive, reputation incentive and incentive portfolio strategies, explains the differential impact of different incentive strategies on the innovation smoothing effect of fiscal and tax subsidies. First of all, based on the analysis of the value effect of green innovation, this paper reveals the impact of government subsidies upon green innovation., and breaks through the research dilemma caused by the generalization of innovation form in existing literature. Secondly, from the perspective of innovation compensation, this paper examines the conditions for government subsidies to promote green innovation based on the dual levels of salary incentives and reputation incentive, and provides a new interpretation of the innovative paradox of fiscal and tax subsidies. Moreover, the research comprehensively considers the real decision-making situation faced by senior executives, and analyzes the innovation compensation effect of incentive portfolio strategy, so as to provide more abundant executive incentive schemes for improving the smooth effect of government subsidies upon green innovation.
The final findings enable manufacturing enterprises to better optimize innovation incentives. Simultaneously, the findings provide a scientific basis for optimizing the government fiscal and tax policy, and will help promote the green development of Chinese manufacturing industry.

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Resource bricolage and innovation of SMEs: The mediating effect of intellectual capital

He Chao, Zhang Jianqi, Liu Heng

2019, 40(7): 140-151.

Abstract ( 361 )

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in economic growth, employment and innovation. However, most SMEs are difficult to raise enough capital, recruit skilled labors and attract other resources. Scholars have observed that some SMEs still innovate successfully under severe resource constraints. Why some SMEs under severe resource constraints innovate successfully? Bricolage theory provides one of feasible explanations. Bricolage refers to “making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities”. The existing studies have shown that SMEs can promote innovation through resource bricolage. Nevertheless, the process and mechanism that resource bricolage enhances innovation are still ambiguous. 
From the perspective of organizational learning, this paper constructs a model that intellectual capital (human capital, organizational capital and social capital) partially mediates the relationship between resource bricolage and innovation. Resource bricolage directly contributes to innovation by transforming seemingly useless resources to useful resources. Resource bricolage can also improve human capital, organizational capital and social capital. Intellectual capital that improved by resource bricolage can also lead to innovation. Because the direct effect of resource bricolage on innovation has been studied extensively, this paper mainly focuses on the mediating effect of intellectual capital.
Human capital means knowledge like experience and skills embedded in employees. When facing resource constraints,bricoleurs do not passively wait for standard resources or give up, but act immediately to find workable solutions through trial and error. They need to excavate new value from existing resources. In this process, employees deepen their understanding of resources and opportunities, and their skills will be trained and improved accordingly. Resource bricolage emphasizes the combination of knowledge in varied fields, which can produce more complex knowledge. Based on above analysis, we hypothesize that resource bricolage is positively related with human capital. 
Organizational capital means knowledge embedded in database, patents and routines. In the process of bricolage, employees challenge existing standard solutions, break traditional institutions and create new rules. Resource bricolage can break organizational rigidity and foster flexibility. The outcome of resource bricolage may be successful or failed. Successful practices would be retained, and failed practices would be abandoned. As a result, the original routines and rules of enterprises are updated. Based on above analysis, we hypothesize that resource bricolage is positively related with organizational capital.
Social capital means knowledge embedded in firms’ internal and external social network.Bricoleurs need to have the ability of building social network. During experimenting resources at hand, employees constantly communicate with each other, which can foster knowledge transfer. Resource bricolage is often accompanied by the interaction among enterprises, customers, suppliers and competitors, thus creatively introducing the ideas and skills of bystanders into organizational knowledge system. Based on above analysis, we hypothesize that resource bricolage is positively related with social capital.
A number of studies have shown that intellectual capital is the determining factor of innovation. Skillful employees can identify market opportunities, propose new ideas, and transform them into new products or services. Excellent management system, business routines and knowledge management system are the determinants of new product development. Strong internal social capital can promote the exchange and sharing of information and knowledge among employees. External social capital is a crucial way for enterprises to obtain information and resources. Information and knowledge can improve innovation performance. Based on above analysis, we hypothesize that resource bricolage is positively related with human capital, organizational capital and social capital, and intellectual capital mediates the relationship between resource bricolage and innovation.
We used questionnaires to collect data. We selected the sample from China Pearl River Delta region. We used random sampling method to delivery 312 questionnaires and retrieved 200 questionnaires. To ensure the validity and reliability of constructs, we adopted mature measured scales drawn from previous literature. All items were measured using the Likert scale. The validity test and reliability test show that our measurements are valid and reliable.
Using SPSS 20.0, the result shows that: The problem of common method bias does not exist; All correlation coefficients do not exceed 0.80; The problem of multicollinearity does not exist. Multiple OLS linear regression indicates that all hypothesis are supported. Intellectual capital partially mediates the relationship between resource bricolage and innovation.
This paper indicates that resource bricolage is an effective method for SMEs to overcome resource constraints and conduct innovation. In the process of resource bricolage, employees’ experience and skills have been upgraded, organizational routines and process have been updated, and organizational social network has also been improved. Resource bricolage not only directly promotes innovation, but also enhances intellectual capital, which further promotes innovation.
In theory, this paper uncovers the process and mechanism between resource bricolage and innovation. Existing studies reveal that resource bricolage can promote product innovation, service innovation, and business model innovation. Subsequent empirical studies verified that resource bricolage directly promotes innovation. However, previous studies have not clearly explained the process and mechanism. This study identifies the mediating effect of intellectual capital, which opens up the black box of resource bricolage to innovation. This paper also identifies a new antecedent of intellectual capital. This study enriches resource bricolage theory and innovation theory.
In practice, this study provides helpful useful guidelines for SMEs to overcome resource constraints, promote intellectual capital and conduct innovation. Our study implies that SMEs should act immediately when facing resource shortage, view resources from a new perspective, and creatively explore new uses of cheap or waste resources at hand. Our research suggests that SMEs should actively carry out resource bricolage activities to increase intellectual capital, thus improve competitiveness. Managers of SMEs should take measures to embed the intellectual capital brought by resource bricolage into the employees, systems, processes and social networks of enterprises.
The imitations of this paper are mainly sample selection and research design. We only selected samples in the Pearl River Delta region, which may lead to the generalization of research conclusions. The samples we selected are surviving enterprise, and there may exist surviving bias problem. Cross-sectional data are used in our study, and the causality needs to be further tested. In future studies, selecting a wider range of samples, collecting data of bankrupted SMEs and conducting periodic research are necessary. We have found the mediating effect of intellectual capital between resource bricolage and innovation, and the other paths of resource bricolage to innovation are still worth further explored.

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Grounded paradigm of virtual enterprise’s strategic evolution process and its mechanism

2019, 40(7): 152-162.

Abstract ( 234 )

Virtual enterprise (VE) is a dynamic organizational form, and its strategy formulation is completed by both the main and member enterprises, and the strategic structure changes due to the difference in the core competence of the main alliance. The VE is a main organization form to suit the dynamic complex market environment. VE’s strategy evolution and its mechanism become a core issue of the research. Using three enterprises cases, the article adopts grounded research paradigm of Chinese management to find different math of VE’s strategic formation.
The VE in this paper has gone through the initial stage and maturestage.Strategic path of the initial stage: under the influence of the market environment, leaders recognize and meet the survival needs of stakeholders to form the strategy of the initial stage of VE. The strategic path of the mature stage is: leaders recognize and meet the growth needs of stakeholders, and actively respond to the market environment to form the strategy of the mature stage of virtual enterprises.
In initial stage, the leader cognition impacts the stakeholders’ survival demand under the market environment. Then, the strategy is formulated in the VE’s primary stage. In mature stage, the leader cognition impacts the stakeholders’ growing demand. This way affects the market environment. Then, the strategy is formulated in the VE’s mature stage. Among these, leader cognition is a key factor to put forward strategic formation. With the leader cognition change from initiative to passivity, these are showing the formation’s features of strategy influenced by market and market influenced by strategy. Using the way of promoting enterprise behavior to society behavior, the article constructs the continuously dynamic ‘W’ model and the model of leader cognition influencing organization development, in order to further explain the motivation and mechanism in process of VE’s strategy evolution.
Leadership cognition is characterized by both continuity and fragmentation. The leader’s passive cognitive fragment comes from the initial development stage of virtual enterprise, while the leader’s active cognitive fragment comes from the mature development stage of virtual enterprise. The continuous development of virtual enterprises reflects the transformation of leaders’ cognition from passive to active, and the concept of virtual degree reflects the dynamic change of virtual degree and materialization degree of virtual enterprises. Therefore, the change process of leaders’ cognition from fragments to continuity can be represented by enterprise virtual degree. The ‘W’ model in this paper only introduces two typical stages. In fact, for the continuous development of virtual enterprises, this "W" will continue to spread, forming a complete picture of the strategic evolution of virtual enterprises.
In the initial stage of enterprise virtual operation, in order to integrate social resources as much as possible and improve core competence, the main alliance enterprise expands its virtual operation scale and changes its organizational mode.At the same time, with the expansion of virtual operation scale, the stability of enterprises decreases, and materialization becomes an effective way to stabilize and continuously develop their core capabilities, which reflects the strategy of virtual enterprises at the mature stage. The essence of both lies in the dynamic influence of virtual degree (dynamic adjustment of virtual and entity) on the strategic evolution of virtual enterprises.
From the path and key nodes, the evolution of the strategy of virtual enterprise follows the certain path, the path of starting point is the market environment, the end is also a market environment, the key nodes of the path is leader cognitive leader brand awareness and the leader, the combination of virtual and physical consciousness, the key nodes associated with stakeholder needs, also related to the virtual enterprise strategy. Moreover, this path has the characteristics of self-circulation and self-improvement.The starting path is formed passively, while the ending path is formed actively.
At the same time, the dynamic change of enterprise virtuality reflects the competitive process of environment and leader cognition in enterprise development. From the perspective of market structure division, the market in the initial stage of virtual enterprise is a relatively grand concept, including the whole market environment.In this environment, it is difficult for leaders to influence the market, and they can only passively adapt to the market by formulating corresponding corporate strategies. Accompanied by leaders to raise the level of cognitive potential opportunities in the market environment and effectively use and avoid risk, identify the virtual enterprise to be able to influence the market niche, the niche market leader cognitive achieve the change from passive to active, leaders have a higher control and initiative, and with the help of a virtual enterprise to control and influence of niche markets, combined with the synergies between different niche market, leaders established the enterprise market influence and market share, so as to consolidate its strategic position.
In this paper, with the aid of leader cognitive the paths, key nodes, continuity and fragmentary, virtual and enterprise strategy, market structure, cognitive complexity, such as multiple perspectives together, formed a dynamic spiral development process, breakthrough the limitation of the previous static research, and combined with the virtual enterprise management phenomenon ‘W’ model to a more extensive management meaning. This study demonstrates the role of leader cognition in the three-layer structure of social layer, organizational layer and individual layer from multiple dimensions. It connects the strategy change of the virtual enterprise horizontally, the market environment and the needs of the stakeholders vertically, and integrates its own strength and virtuality, so that the leader’s cognition comprehensively interprets the mechanism and process of the continuous evolution of the strategy of the virtual enterprise. To sum up, "going with the flow of the market" and "building momentum to enter the market" are an image summary of the strategic evolution process and mechanism of virtual enterprises.

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A study of the influence of equity incentive on ambidextrous innovation strategy of SMEs

Xu Ning, Jiang Nannan, Zhang Jin

2019, 40(7): 163-172.

Abstract ( 396 )

With the acceleration of technological change and the intensification of market competition, the importance of improving independent innovation capability for Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises has been increasingly prominent. Therefore, how to guide executives to allocate resources rationally to the innovation process is the key to determine the effectiveness of technological innovation in SMEs. From the perspective of synergy between institutional innovation and technological innovation, many scholars have actively explored institutional transformation to promote technological innovation in recent years, especially the corporate governance system that can support innovation. As an important component of the governance system, the impact of equity incentive on technological innovation has also become a matter of concern for scholars. However, most of the current researches focus on how equity incentive to stimulate the innovation willingness of executives. Few researches involve how to guide executives to rationally allocate resources, that is, how to influence the strategic choice of technological innovation.
In practice, when enterprises put their willingness of technological innovation into practice, they are faced with an ambidextrous strategic choice of innovation: (1) in terms of technological innovation path, whether to choose internal independent R&D or external technology introduction? (2) in terms of technological innovation mode, should they rely mainly on radical innovation or incremental innovation? First of all, internal independent R&D and external technology introduction are both technological innovation behaviors of enterprises, but they are different forms of technological sources for enterprises. Secondly, technological innovation can be divided intoradical innovation and incremental innovation because of the different intensity and objects of technological change. Continuous incremental innovation is an important accumulation of radical innovation. Radical innovation can more easily transform technology into lasting competitive advantages of enterprises and help SMEs to keep up with the pace of market changes. However, the return period of radical innovation is longer and the uncertainty of its output is higher. In reality, many SMEs are apt to fall into the "application trap" because they are persistent in applying existing technologies to obtain short-term benefits. Then, will the equity incentives granted to executives and different intensity of equity incentives have an impact on the technological innovation strategy choices of SMEs in China? How to reasonably guide the executives to make more effective decision for ambidextrous technological innovation strategy through designing equity incentive contracts? This is a common concern in both the field of theory and practice, and it is also as the logical entry point of this article.
In view of this, we use the balanced panel data of China’s small and medium-sized listed companies from 2007 to 2014 to do theoretical and empirical research on the above issues.There are three theoretical contributions. First of all, from the perspective of synergy between institutional innovation and technological innovation, we explore and interpret the effect of equity incentive on the strategic choice of technological innovation and expand the research perspective of technological innovation-oriented corporate governance system design. Additionally, technological innovation is commonly regarded as a static variable of a single dimension. Based on ambidexterity theory, we divide technological innovation into two dimensions including the path and mode. And we explain the influence way of equity incentive on technological innovation concretely to interpret the internal mechanism of the interaction between the two dimensions so as to provide more beneficial reference for enterprises’ practice. Finally, combining the traditional principal-agent theory with the behavioral agency model, the positive correlation between equity incentive and internal independent R&D path and the inverse U-curve hypothesis between equity incentive and radical innovation are proposed and verified, which break through the limitation of linear thinking and provide new empirical evidence for the evolution of the theory. 
Our primary conclusions and implications are as follows. Firstly, SMEs which awarded executive equity incentives are significantly higher than other SMEs in terms of independent R&D investment level, radical innovation and incremental innovation level. Therefore, under the established institutional environment, equity incentive is an important way to promote SMEs’ executives to make reasonable strategic choice of technological innovation so as to improve their technological innovation ability. Secondly, in terms of technological innovation path, the stronger the equity incentive intensity is, the more SMEs tend to choose internal independent R&D rather than external technology introduction. If improving the level of independent R&D is the focus of technological innovation strategy, it is undoubtedly an effective measure to increase the proportion of equity incentive in executive compensation when designing executive incentive contracts. Thirdly, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between equity incentive intensity and radical innovation in term of technological innovation mode, which is the result of the interaction of traditional principal-agent theory and behavioral agent model. Owing to the dual characteristics of "risk aversion" and "loss aversion", the promotion effect of equity incentive on radical innovation does not always exist. When the intensity of equity incentive exceeds the optimal value, it restrains radical innovation. Therefore, reasonable design of equity incentive intensity and contract structure considering different institutional factors is the key to improve the radical innovation level of small and medium-sized enterprises.
We introduce ambidexterity theory to corporate governance research, and focus on the choice of path and mode of technological innovation in order to explore the specific ways in which equity incentives affect technological innovation systematically. Although some domestic scholars have used different samples to come to the conclusion that equity incentives can promote enterprises’ innovation ability, but they mostly ignored the process of technological innovation. In addition, we combine the traditional principal-agent theory with behavioral agency model, and introduced the two theory into technological innovation research. The non-linear relationship between equity incentive and radical innovation is proposed and confirmed, which is consistent with the similar conclusions drawn by Martin et al. (2013) and Baixauli-Soler et al. (2015) . But they used risk-taking as a dependent variable. Based on all above, the following research will further discuss the multi-level constitutional factors that affect the strength of equity incentive and the structural design of equity incentive contracts that promote technological innovation in enterprises, so as to provide more abundant empirical evidence for theory and practice.

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Behavior tactics, resource structure and SMEs’ innovation output

Li Xiaoxiang, Li Jing

2019, 40(7): 173-181.

Abstract ( 237 )

Improvisation and bricolage mean adapting to changing circumstances and looking for new approaches correspondingly. In the hypercompetitive environment nowadays, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fit and prefer these two tactics for responding to ever-changing situation and their characters of poor planning and high flexibility. More importantly, resource scarcity is prevalent in SMEs, but a large amount of literature ignore these scarcity and study SMEs’ innovation in ideal adequate resource circumstances. Normally, innovation activities, such as research and development, need and consume lots of resources, and SMEs bring forward a large percentage of innovation output although they frequently drop into resource scarcity. It is valuable and interesting to probe into how they overcome the constraint and achieve success in the process of innovation. 
Improvisation and bricolage often occur when enterprises lack in time or material resources, and therefore, become common behavior tactics in SMEs. Meanwhile, roles of improvisation and bricolage have been roundly questioned and criticized for their denying and discarding plans’ effects which are commonplace in nowadays enterprise and seem to constitute the foundation of activities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness in most place. These debatable and conflicting arguments cause confusion in SMEs’ practice, and it’s necessary to carefully analysis and test the effects of improvisation and bricolage. Especially, SMEs have increasingly become an important force in global innovation, and are largely concerned with effects of improvisation and bricolage in breaking time and resource restraints and seizing the opportunity to innovation, because of their shortage in resource and the characters of innovation activities, such as high-risk, high-investment and extended-cycle.
As two common behavior tactics in SMEs, improvisation and bricolage are usually coupled together, and it is important to clarify whether they can promote or interfere the other effect. This paper separately analyzes main effects of improvisation and bricolage and interactive effects between them from the point of SMEs’ innovation outputs. Moreover, resource is necessary for all tactics enforcement, and SMEs are often limited in resource and resource-acquire ability while can adjust resource structure accordingly. In order to fully realize the value of improvisation and bricolage in SMEs’ innovation process, this paper, therefore, probes into suitable resource structure for these two tactics from the points of quantity relation between absorbed resource and unabsorbed resource. 
Comparing with those SMEs what pay less attention to or even lack in innovation as the sample, technology-based SMEs benefit for rigorously testification in our research context. The former kind of SMEs are poor in system variation from the perspective of innovation, and cannot show clearly how other factors bring out variation of innovation output, while the latter can be just the opposite. In view of industrial difference and distribution character of technology-based SMEs, this paper selects software firms in Hefei and Nanjing cities as the sample. By performing the multiple linear regression test using questionnaire data from 232 SMEs in software industry with ordinary least squares (OLS) method and the software of SPSS, it confirms that: Firstly, the effects of improvisation and bricolage on SMEs’ innovation outputs are inversed-U shape and linear positive, respectively. Namely, applying improvisation tactics appropriately seems most conducive to promoting innovation while more bricolage will induce more innovation output to SMEs. Secondly, coefficient of product item of improvisation and bricolage is negative significantly. It demonstrates that these two tactics can weaken the other one’s effect on SMEs’ innovation outputs, and it should be prudent to perform these two tactics simultaneously. Thirdly, coefficients of product items of resource structure or its square multiplied by improvisation are positive significantly while the product item referring resource structure and bricolage is positive, but not significant. All of these results together to demonstrate that, it’s benefit to maintain more absorbed resource, but not the unabsorbed one, for enhancing improvisation’s effect on SMEs’ innovation output. It other words, considering the limitation of total available resources, SMEs should allocate more resource to specific activities and actors to enhance the effect of improvisation on innovation output.
From the perspective of SMEs’ innovation, these results represent the functions and the roles of improvisation and bricolage separately, what can be further used to clarify the opposite views about their roles. As some scholars promoted, improvisation and bricolage may create chaos and failure to actors. However, our research hypothesis and empirical study results offer rebuttal of these claims, and also point out the necessary of discussing their effects on innovation in the tactics combination level. Moreover, it indicates that absorbing resource and adjusting resource structure can contribute to create favorable environment for these tactics. Furthermore, although improvisation often takes place in the resource scarcity condition, it also needs appropriate resource support, such as absorbed-oriented resource structure. More specifically, results of this study can provide several enlightenment and serve as reference for SMEs dealing with resource scarcity and making efforts on innovation in the future. First, SMEs can enhance innovation output by bricolage tactics, and should regularize, restrain and guide improvisation tactics on its domain and extent. It doesn’t always stand up for the viewpoints that persistently assert bricolage’s benefit for innovation although SMEs prefer this tactics for its flexibility and other advantages. Secondly, both of improvisation and bricolage are suitable in resource scarcity environment, but it doesn’t means that enterprises should take them simultaneously. Fulfill of improvisation or bricolage tactics need relevant necessary resource, and SMEs’ limited resource can’t effectively afford them simultaneously. Thus, one these two tactics will weaken the other’s effect on innovation output instead of strengthening it. In other words, SMEs should carefully take improvisation and bricolage at the same time because for negative interactive effects between them, and it is worth discussing about the symbiotic and compatible relationships between these two common tactics. Thirdly, effects of improvisation are diversified and contextualized, and should be carried out by combination with appropriate resource allocation. Success in fulfilling improvisation needs flexible behaviors and cooperation of employees, and it’s beneficial for realizing innovation value of improvisation definitely to allocate resource to grass-root employees, departments, specific areas and affairs. Unabsorbed resource, such as cash, can be widely used for most contexts, but realization of their value need transform themselves into capacities, labors and other absorbed resource. Transformation therein takes lots of time while greatest value of improvisation lies in the time and speed advantage it can create for enterprise. Thus, comparing with range of application, speed of resource application shows more important and valuable functions for fulfillment of improvisation.

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Operating mechanism for the virtual customer engagement platform: A theoretical and empirical study

Wang Li

2019, 40(7): 182-191.

Abstract ( 307 )

With the advent of the customer-centered era, the improvement of corporate innovation performance is increasingly dependent on demand data obtained through customer engagement. However, in real life, the distribution of customers is scattered, and it is particularly difficult to attract customers. Nowadays, the booming development of Internet provides new ideas for solving this problem. A large number of enterprises have begun to use information technology to effectively attract customer to participate and make full use of customer demand data. In this context, Virtual Customer Engagement (VCE) are emerging from time to time. In essence, VCE is a virtual community of innovation in a broad definition. It is an Internet platform established by enterprises to facilitate customers’ participation in product innovation activities and to share product knowledge, experience and innovative ideas. Through Virtual Customer Engagement (VCE), corporations can attract customers to participate in innovation, make full use of customer big data, and create customer-centered organizations, but the operating mechanism of VCE has not received enough attention from the academy.
This study divides the VCE platform into three sub-platforms based on VCE functions: (1) The sub-platform of information display, is a platform for enterprises to display various information such as products and prices to customers, including product introduction and FAQ. It’s without the interaction between the business and the customer, so there is no feedback process. (2) The sub-platform of demand collection, is a platform to facilitate customer to give feedback, including online survey, customization, message board, email functions, etc. The feedback process is one-way from customer to the corporation. (3) The sub-platform of deep interaction, is the platform for customer-enterprise interaction or customer-customer interaction, including online community, online customer service, customer design and product virtual experience. It is deep two-way interaction. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response model, the operating mechanism of each sub-platform is analyzed. Specifically, the developments of the IT environment and the market environment constitute the operating mechanism of the VCE. The interaction between the enterprises and the customers causes the operating motives of the VCE, and the attraction behavior from enterprises and participation behavior from customers make up the running process of the VCE.
Moreover, by using content analysis, this paper examines the operating mechanism of VCE platforms in the website of China’s top 500 enterprises. The study finds that: (1) 67.51% of enterprises use the information display sub-platform, of which 95.99% contain product introduction, 39.03% contain the FAQ. This shows that most companies have built an information display sub-platform. But product introduction and FAQ functions only enable customers to view information not interact with others. Customers only read those information passively. Since customers cannot provide suggestions and opinions, companies are unable to get user data, which makes customer knowledge management impossible. Meanwhile, construction of the two functions is only done by the IT department of the enterprise. (2) 42.77% of the enterprises use demand collection sub-platform. Through the content analysis, and based on the characteristics of online survey, customization, message board and e-mail, customer participation behavior is mainly represented by the one-way, not real-time feedback, and most data collected are programmatic knowledge. In this context, company’s support behavior is simple customer knowledge management, beneficial to improve marketing. Since customer knowledge management involves IT department and marketing department, it is necessary to cooperate with these two departments to effectively use customer data. (3) Only a small number of enterprises use the deep interaction sub-platform (12.55%), which implies that it is not easy to build this sub-platform. Through the analysis, it is found that online community, online customer service, virtual product experience and customer design reflect a two-way real-time communication between customers and enterprises. Customers can actively participate in product innovation and provide descriptive knowledge for enterprises in order to achieve deep participation. It is a complex customer knowledge management for enterprises to manage the descriptive knowledge. Therefore, the IT department, the marketing department and the R&D department need to work together, that is, IT needs to use information technology, marketing understand the customer needs, R&D use customer needs for product innovation. The empirical research supports the operational mechanism proposed by the theoretical model. However, it has also been found that most of China’s top 500 companies have not yet built the two sub-platforms of demand collection and deep interaction, which are not effective in attracting customer participation in actual.
This research not only promotes the development of VCE theory and expands the customer participation theory, but also helps to guide enterprises to improve the construction of VCE platform, to shape customer-oriented organization from the perspective of information technology, and to improve innovation performance.
(1)Specifically, this study firstly divides VCE into three sub-platforms, and analyzes the characteristics and operating mechanisms of each platform. Theoretically, it expands VCE theory, promotes the research development of VCE operation mechanism, and provides a theoretical basis for studying antecedents and outcomes of VCE in the future. Secondly, this study has carried out classification on customer participation from the perspective of VCE operation, thus perfecting and expanding the customer participation theory. Previous studies have shown that customers are the source of enterprise innovation. This study believes that customer participation is largely influenced by corporate support behavior, that is, different stages of corporate support behavior correspond to different stages of customer engagement behavior, which can be divided into no-feedback phase, one-way feedback phase and two-way interaction phase. Based on this, this paper analyzes the characteristics and effects of customer participation in different stages.
(2)Practically, only a few enterprises provide demand collection and deep interaction sub-platforms, indicating that the implementation of VCE strategy in China’s top 500 enterprises is just at the beginning, and the development speed does not catch up with the growth rate of Internet users, so it is difficult to meet the growing customer demands. They need to improve their abilities of combining innovation resources and stimulating innovation vitality of enterprises. This research guides enterprises to master the rules of VCE operation, explore VCE suitable for itself, and shape customer-oriented organizations from the perspective of information technology.

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A research on the factors affecting participants creativity in network crowdsourcing

Zhao Xuanwei,Xia Enjun, Li Sen

2019, 40(7): 192-205.

Abstract ( 251 )

The essence of online crowdsourcing is open innovation, which maximizes the value of both crowdsourcing enterprises and the public by stimulating the creativity of the public. Crowdsourcing system expands the boundary of the utilization of organizational resources, and realize internal and external interactive innovation by mining external intellectual resources. Network crowdsourcing is an integration of the extension of knowledge management and the outsourcing of resource popularization. The charm of crowdsourcing is to transform the external social mass creativity into enterprise productivity through the Internet. The participants’ creativity in network crowdsourcing system is fundamentally derived from the participation behavior of individual. And if the participants have a very good record of crowdsourcing contests and rich contests experience, the participants are confident in the contests, which may be arouse the enthusiasm of the participants in crowdsourcing contests and motivate participants to the highest level of creativity. If the participants spend a lot of time and effort on crowdsourcing contests, they will put more time, energy and emotion into the crowdsourcing contests, which is likely to bring about a high level of individual creativity and ultimately improve the performance of the overall crowdsourcing system. Therefore, we study the factors affecting participants creativity in network crowdsourcing, and further analyze the path of work engagement and self-efficacy on individual creativity.
This paper not only can enrich the theory of network crowdsourcing participants’ creativity research, but also make up for the lack of quantitative methods of the current network crowdsourcing research insufficiency. In theoretical aspect, it also can extend the network crowdsourcing research methods and ideas, and has a very positive role to study on the breadth and depth of crowdsourcing theory. In practice, it can provide a good theoretical basis to promote the healthy development of the network crowdsourcing contests and stimulate the wisdom and creativity of the general public, and has far-reaching realistic significance.
As a result, this paper studies the main factors that influence the individual creativity in network crowdsourcing system from work engagement and self-efficacy. First, we introduce the related theories of work engagement and self-efficacy, and analyze the relationship between work engagements, self-efficacy and individual creativity of network crowdsourcing participants. Then, we propose our research hypotheses, and construct the concept model of the relationship between individual work engagement, self-efficacy and creativity, and use the structural equation model to test our model validate hypotheses.
In this paper, we select the participants on the Kaggle crowdsourcing contest platform (a data analysis competition website) as the research object. As one of the internationally renowned online crowdsourcing competition platforms, the participants on the Kaggle crowdsourcing contest platform, most of whom are graduate students in related fields or work as data analysts. The platform’s participants are eager to conduct data development and improve their analytical techniques in the real world by participating in crowdsourcing contests. Therefore, the participants’ individual creativity and self-efficacy are highly representative. As for the individual creativity of participants, we use the total score of participants on the online crowdsourcing platform to measure individual creativity. As for the individual work engagement and self-efficacy, we investigate participants’ physiological engagement, emotional engagement, cognitive engagement, domain task self-efficacy and interactive learning self-efficacy through online questionnaire survey.
The results of empirical analysis show that:(a) work engagement of participants in network crowdsourcing plays an important role in individual creativity directly, and both emotional engagement and cognitive engagement have significant positive effects on individual creativity, while physiological engagement has a significant negative effect on individual creativity. This indicates that if the developer of online crowdsourcing wants to stimulate the creativity of the mass participants, only focusing on the physiological input of time, energy and other aspects will not necessarily improve their creativity. More importantly, it needs to stimulate the emotional and cognitive input of the participants, so as to contribute to the creativity. (b) Participants’ self-efficacy has a significant positive effect on individual creativity directly on the network crowdsourcing contest platform, among which the promoting effect of domain task self-efficacy is stronger than that of interactive learning self-efficacy. This indicates that the higher the perceived self-efficacy of individuals, the more likely they are to succeed in carrying out creative activities. Through the investigation of the self-efficacy perception of participants, the crowdsourcing platform can select public participants with high domain task self-efficacy, so as to obtain participants with high level of creativity and ultimately improve the innovation performance of the overall crowdsourcing system. (c) Work engagement plays the mediating role between self-efficacy and creativity, and the influence path is: domain task self-efficacy→emotional engagement /cognitive engagement→creativity; interactive learning self-efficacy→cognitive engagement→creativity. (d) Participants’ self-efficacy also plays the mediating role between work engagement and creativity, and the influence path is: physiological engagement→domain task self-efficacy/ interactive learning self-efficacy→creativity; emotional engagement→interactive learning self-efficacy→creativity; cognitive engagement→domain task self-efficacy/ interactive learning self-efficacy→creativity. This indicates that the individual’s sense of self-efficacy will arouse his enthusiasm to participate in the contests and increase his involvement in the crowdsourcing contests, thus affecting the creativity and performance of the participants. At the same time, the degree of work engagement of an individual will also increase his confidence in the field of online crowdsourcing contests, improve his sense of self-efficacy, and further improve his level of creativity.
From the above analyses, we can see that two ways are available to improve the creativity of the general public. On the one hand, the business should provide competitive bonus incentives and the crowdsourcing platform should design diversified crowdsourcing tasks to attract a large number of participants and improve the work input of online crowdsourcing participants. On the other hand, the self-efficacy of network crowdsourcing participants should be continuously cultivated. Participants with a high sense of self-efficacy will have a certain degree of confidence in completing the crowdsourcing task and increase their input in the crowdsourcing task, which will help them give full play to their high level of creativity and improve the overall innovation efficiency of the crowdsourcing system.

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A research on the impact of heterogeneous social capitals on crowdfunding performance by taking “www.zhongchou.cn” as an example

Liu Zhengchi, Zhou Sha, Ma Tao

2019, 40(7): 206-214.

Abstract ( 252 )

Internet-based crowdfunding has been regarded as the new mechanism of incubating creative programs which involves mass participation and value co-creation, and how to optimize the financing performance has always been an important topic in the field of crowdfunding. Although a few scholars have discussed the interaction between social capital and crowdfunding performance, there is still no systematic research on the effects of heterogeneous social capital on crowdfunding performance. In fact, there are differences in governance mechanisms between internal and external social capital of crowdfunding platforms, so it is necessary to treat them differently.
Firstly, this paper defines the concept of social-network-capital and community capital based on the theory of social capital.While the social-network-capital refers to all kinds of potential resources acquired by initiators from their third-party social networks (e.g. Weixin, Weibo, Facebook, etc.), the community capital refers to all kinds of potential resources acquired by initiators from a decentralized network within crowdfunding platform. Hence, the former is often about the “individual” and the latter is often about the “idea”.
Secondly, three hypotheses are put forward based on information asymmetry theory. From the perspective of governance mechanism, social-network-capital and community capital play different roles in ex-ante screening and ex-post supervision. Specifically, social-network-capital is conducive to identifying the credit types of initiators and supervising the implementation of initiators, while community capital plays a significant role in identifying project risks and punishing project defaults. Because the latter concerns the facts more than the individuals, it has unique advantages in solving the problem of “trust of strangers”. Based on the above theoretical analysis, this paper puts forward three hypotheses as follows:H1, social-network-capital has a positive impact on crowdfunding performance. H2, community capital has a positive impact on crowdfunding performance. H3, comparatively, community capital does better.
At last, the paper empirically identifies the relationship between heterogeneous social capitals and crowdfunding performance by using multiple regression model based on the data collected from the Chines earliest crowdfunding website “www.zhongchou.cn” over the period of 2014-2015 from public financing pages of projects, and the empirical results support all of the hypotheses. To sum up, the main empirical results are shown as follows:(1) two kinds of social capital both are positively correlated with crowdfunding performance, projects with stronger social bonds are more likely to succeed in financing activities. This shows that, in addition to hard information such as financial identity,crowdfunding investors can also obtain informal information of initiators, i.e. soft information, at a lower cost, which provides important references for crowdfunidng investment decision. (2) The effects of two types of social capital on crowdfunding performance is different, and the impact of community capital is more prominent than that of social-network-capital. The initiator and the members of the crowdfunding community are connected by weak links, and the maintenance of the relationship mostly depends on the common goal or interests but not personal favors, that is, they will treat of a matter as a case for discussion without reflection on any particular person. Therefore, the quality signal of projects transmitted by community capital is more trustworthy for investors to participate in decision-making.
The contributions of this paper are twofold. At first, there are many international literature studying the influence factors of crowdfunding performance and a few paper studying the correlation between the social capital and crowdfunding outcome. However, little attention has been paid to the different governance mechanism of heterogeneous social capital. This paper considers two types of social capital, one is embedded in initiators’ personal social network which is usually formed by “strong ties”, the other is embedded in a professional and decentralized social network which is usually form by “weak ties”. Second, it is found that the feature of “focus on the case but not the person” leads community capital performs better in screening risk and supervising agent. This finding is the most important theoretical contribution of this study.
This paper also provides advice on enterprise management and policy implementation for different types of participants of crowdfunding markets. The paper argues that the initiator should pay more attention to the development of personal social network, promote the accumulation of social capital, and improve the utilization rate of social network. Crowdfunding platforms should improve the project review processes and strictly fulfill the obligation of due diligence, more important, guiding the establishment of professional communities. The implementation of government policy should focus on strengthen the protection of crowdfunding investors and provide more ideas and technical guidance.

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Venture capital’s entry time, technology preference and innovation performance: An evidence from manufacturing firms listed on the GEM by the PSM method

Cheng Liwei, Zou Shuang

2019, 40(7): 215-223.

Abstract ( 252 )

In recent years, the effect of the policy of demand-side management driven by consumption, investment and export is getting worse, which results in the economic growth of China is slowing down. Innovation is a main source of economic development, so supply-side structural reform driven by innovation must be an inevitable choice for promoting the economy growth of China. Entrepreneurial companies are the main subjects of innovation. Venture capital is regarded as an effective tool to promote innovation of entrepreneurial enterprises. Thus, we attempt to promote innovation from the prospect of venture capital and entrepreneurial enterprises. However, at present, the information asymmetry of China is serious and the financial institutions lack financial tools to avoid risk. Meanwhile, the development of venture capital started late in China, and venture capital has lower risk tolerance. It will inevitably affect the venture capitalists’ investment objectives, selection of investment stages, preference for technologic innovation and innovation performance of entrepreneurial companies. Therefore, it is of great importance for the development of venture capital and the industrial structure upgrading of China to accurately assess whether venture capital that enters into entrepreneurial companies on different time will prefer entrepreneurial firms that have higher R&D investment and how venture capital that enters into entrepreneurial companies on different time affects the innovation performance of entrepreneurial firms.
In this paper, taking venture capitals’ technology preference before entering into the entrepreneurial companies and entry time into account, we put forward a logic thought that venture capitals’ technology preference, entry time and innovation performance of start-up firm. And we use Propensity Score Matching method analyzing whether venture capital that enters into entrepreneurial companies on different time will have technology preference and examining the effect of venture capital that enters into entrepreneurial companies on different time on the innovation performance of start-up firms.
The sample used in empirical analysis consists of manufacturing companies listed on China’s Growth Enterprise Market from 2009 to 2012, which is a specialized financing platform for entrepreneurial companies with high technology in China. We manually collected the venture capital information from the companies’ prospectuses, Venture Capital Development Report in China (2008-2015) and the dataset of Zero2IPO Group, and the patent application quantity data, containing the invention patent quantity, utility model patent quantity and design patent quantity, from the Patent Office of the People’s Republic of China.
The results show that venture capitals that enter into firms during 1 year before IPO don’t prefer start-up firms that have higher R&D investment and also don’t improve the start-up firms’ innovation performance remarkably, neither the incremental innovation nor radical innovation. However, venture capitals that enter into the firms during 1-2 year before IPO prefer start-up firms that have higher R&D investment and dynamically promote the innovation performance of start-up firms remarkably, but as time goes on, the contribution of venture capitals on entrepreneurial companies’ innovation performance gradually decreases, and the effect of venture capitals on the incremental innovation of entrepreneurial companies is greater than it is on the radical innovation. From the results, we can see that venture capitals that enter into the companies earlier prefer entrepreneurial firms that have higher R&D investment, while venture capitals that enter into the companies later don’t prefer entrepreneurial firms that have higher R&D investment. Moreover, venture capitals that enter into the entrepreneurial companies earlier have a positive effect on the innovation performance of entrepreneurial companies, while venture capitals that enter into the entrepreneurial companies later have no significant effect on the innovation performance of entrepreneurial companies. Furthermore, venture capitals that enter into the entrepreneurial companies earlier have a positive effect on the radical innovation and the incremental innovation of entrepreneurial companies, and the effect of venture capitals on the incremental innovation of entrepreneurial companies is greater than it is on the radical innovation, while venture capitals that enter into the entrepreneurial companies later have no significant effect neither on the radical innovation nor the incremental innovation.
In the future, it will be the key point for venture capital development to solve the information asymmetry between entrepreneurial companies and venture capitals, enhance the risk control abilities of venture capitals, and drive venture capitals to invest in entrepreneurial companies in the early stage.
The possible contributions of this paper are as follows: first, taking venture capital’s technology preference before entering into the entrepreneurial companies and entry time into account, we put forward a logic thought that venture capital’s technology preference, entry time and innovation performance of start-up firm and analyze the selection effect of venture capitals that enter into entrepreneurial companies on different time on the entrepreneurial firms that have higher R&D investment and the different effect of venture capitals that enter into entrepreneurial companies on different time on the innovation performance of entrepreneurial firms. Second, we consider the dynamic impact of venture capitals on the innovation performance of entrepreneurial companies, and according to the heterogeneity of innovation, analyze the effect of venture capitals that enter into entrepreneurial companies on different time on the radical innovation performance and incremental innovation performance of entrepreneurial firms. Third, this paper considers the non-randomness when venture capitals select the entrepreneurial companies, and use the propensity score matching method to correct for the possible sample selection bias if estimate use the existing linear regression analysis method, which makes the evaluation results more accurate and credible.

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A research on the entrepreneurs’ effectuation logic formation mechanism：The mediating effect of self-efficacy

Zou Yang, Cui Lianguang, Yan Xu

2019, 40(7): 224-234.

Abstract ( 208 )

The emergence and development of emerging technologies have brought tremendous changes to the global business environment. The market environment faced by enterprises is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In the highly uncertain environment, it is difficult to predict the future, and traditional decision-making methods do not work. In recent years, a large number of entrepreneurship cases and empirical studies have proved that in highly uncertain environment, entrepreneurs follow the effectuation to make decision. Effectuation theory is action-oriented. It describes how to think, make decisions and practice under uncertainty, including a series of principles such as flexibility, affordable loss, previous commitment and experiment. At present, the effectuation theory has attracted great attention in the field of entrepreneurship. However, researchers have not explained and answered the formation mechanism of the effectuation of entrepreneurs. Besides, Expert entrepreneurs use effectuation because of their rich experience in entrepreneurship, then why and how to induce effectuation? Should effectuation be triggered by rich entrepreneurial experience, or is it a way of thinking and decision-making skills acquired through learning? For ordinary entrepreneurs, under the premise of relatively lack of entrepreneurial experience, can they use the effectuation to make decisions like expert entrepreneurs? Responding to the above questions is very important for studying the formation mechanism of effectuation. Conceptual articles such as Hinz and Zhang Guangqi suggested that self-efficacy can influence the decision-making logic of entrepreneurs. Therefore, this study draws lessons from Bandura’s social learning theory, introduces self-efficacy into the study of effectuation, and explores the key triggering factors and formation mechanism of effectuation, as well as the mediating effect of self-efficacy.
On the basis of summarizing the existing literature，the research model is constructed and the research hypothesis is proposed. This study collected data in the form of questionnaires from Shenzhen, Tianjin and Beijing. In order to ensure the diversity and reliability of sample data, the questionnaire was mainly distributed through the channels of alumni association, entrepreneurship forum, entrepreneurship incubator and public creation space. The questionnaire asked the founder or principal person in charge of the start-up enterprise to fill in. A total of 350 questionnaires were distributed and 132 questionnaires were collected as the valid samples. Likert five-level scoring method was used in all the items of the eight variables involved in the questionnaire. According to the information described, the respondents selected scores that matched their own feelings. 1 represented a strong disagreement, and the 5 represented a complete agreement. In this study, Harmon single factor analysis was adopted, and the common method variation problem can be ignored.
Before data analysis, Cronbach’s coefficient was used to test the reliability of the variables, and confirmatory factor analysis in the structural equation model was used to test the scale’s structural validity. The test results show that the scale of all the variables have good reliability and discriminative validity. Correlation analysis also shows that there is a strong correlation among the variables in this study. Then Amos was used to test the research hypothesis, and the conclusions showed that: (1) previous accomplishment, vicarious experience and entrepreneurial passion have a significant positive impact on effectuation. That means when entrepreneurs have rich accomplishment in the past, are good at obtaining vicarious experience through expert entrepreneurs, and have a strong entrepreneurial passion, they are more likely to use effectuation to make decisions. (2) Self-efficacy has a significant positive impact on effectuation, which means that when entrepreneurs have a strong sense of self-efficacy, they tend to use effectuation for decision-making. (3) Self-efficacy plays a complete mediating role in the influence of previous accomplishment and vicarious experience on effectuation, and a partial mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial passion on effectuation.
This study expands the research on the key inducers of the effectuation. Effectuation was initially proposed as a decision-making logic unique to expert entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial experience, while ordinary entrepreneurs tend to use causation to try to predict future events, even if these events are totally unpredictable. Through empirical research, this study finds that the effectuation is not necessarily triggered by rich entrepreneurial experience. Under the premise of relatively lack of entrepreneurial experience, ordinaryentrepreneurs can also use the effectuation to make decisions like expert entrepreneurs through vicarious experience and entrepreneurial passion. Besides, this paper expands the study of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is considered to affect individual behavior. At present, in the field of entrepreneurship research, some studies have shown that self-efficacy can encourage entrepreneurs to face the difficulties and challenges in the process of entrepreneurship. Other studies have found that self-efficacy can affect the new venture performance. Self-efficacy havs been tested to be more likely to influence entrepreneurs’ behavior and outcomes. As an important logic of entrepreneur’s behavior, the effectuation is considered to be influenced by self-efficacy. Through empirical research, this paper verifies that self-efficacy positively affects effectuation, including flexibility, affordable loss, previous commitment and experiment. What’s more, this study enriches the research on the formation mechanism of effectuation. The improvement of entrepreneurs’ previous accomplishment, vicarious experience and entrepreneurial passion will lead to the improvement of self-efficacy, which further promotes entrepreneurs to use the effectuation for decision-making.
Practically, the results of this study have important implications for our entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship education not only teaches skills and promotes entrepreneurship willingness, but also improves students’ self-efficacy through abundant means, such as acquiring vicarious experience and arousing students’ emotions. A higher sense of self-efficacy enables students to use effectuation to think and make decisions like expert entrepreneurs. For entrepreneurs who do not have the opportunity to get entrepreneurship education, the effectuation can also be learned. By making more contacts with experienced entrepreneurs, summarizing their business ideas and decision-making methods, transforming other people’s experience into their own experience, and imitating it into business practice, their self-efficacy will be improved and they are finally able to use the effectuation to make decisions skillfully.
The shortcomings of this paper are as follows: (1) The data sources of this study have some limitations. Future research can expand the scope of data sources; (2) The cross-sectional data collected in this study cannot reflect the dynamic development of entrepreneurs. Future research can track entrepreneurs over a long period of time and collect longitudinal data to analyze dynamic impacts; and (3) The results show that self-efficacy partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurship passion and effectuation, which indicates that there may be other paths. Therefore, mediating variables could be further studied in the future.

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Study on relationships between entrepreneurial bricolage and TBSME’S entrepreneurial performance: From a perspective of prior experience

Yi Chaohui, Xie Yurou,Zhang Chenglong

2019, 40(7): 235-246.

Abstract ( 287 )

As the main force of China’s social and economic development, the technology-based small and micro enterprises (TBSMEs) play an important role in promoting technological innovation, increasing employment opportunities, and prospering the market economy. However, they have been faced with capital, talents, platforms and other resources, and difficult access to the entrepreneurial resources from the outside in time, therefore, the development of most TBSMEs are not optimistic. However, in recent years, a small number of TBSMEs have implemented different types of innovation activities such as product and service innovation, technological innovation, and organizational model innovation to improve entrepreneurial performance. So, how is the mechanism behind this phenomenon explained?
From a resource perspective, the theory of entrepreneurial bricolage proposed by Baker and Nelson (2005) can make a reasonable explanation. It reveals how entrepreneurs can break through resource bottlenecks in the entrepreneurial process for achieving innovation and growth of new ventures through the creative use or selective bricolage of internal and external resources in a resource-poor environment, which may stem from the entrepreneurial bricolage can utilize and combine of resources that are fragmented, neglected, or even useless andexisting network resources, achieving the resource advantage of“being out of nothing”, thereby taking advantage of new opportunities and responding to new challenges, which can build a sustainable competitive advantage.
Although a large number of studies have shown that entrepreneurial bricolage effectively promotes the improvement of entrepreneurial performance, there are still a few studies that draw inconsistent conclusions: for start-ups in the growth stage, entrepreneurial bricolage has a negative or not obvious impact on entrepreneurial performance; At the same time, as an emerging entrepreneurial theory, the intermediate path of entrepreneurial bricolage into entrepreneurial performance is still unclear, and there is still no in-depth quantitative discussion in the existing literature. However, the entrepreneur’s previous experience plays an important role in the process of entrepreneurial bricolage to promote the improvement of entrepreneurial performance, which remains to be further tested.
As an important part of entrepreneurial human capital, prior experience is the expertise and knowledge accumulated in long-term industry work or entrepreneurship, which are intangible, proprietary, imitation, irreplaceable, etc. In the later entrepreneurial activities, entrepreneurs can effectively identify potential industry risks and entrepreneurial opportunities, and actively respond to many challenges in the entrepreneurial process, thereby greatly improving entrepreneurial performance. However, some scholars have also found that entrepreneurs’ prior experience does not necessarily have a positive effect on entrepreneurial performance, and there may be non-linear relationships or U-type relationships. Therefore, an impact of prior experience on entrepreneurial performance is still worth further exploration.
In summary, based on the view of enterprise resources and human capital, the paper explores and empirically examines the mechanism on entrepreneurial bricolage affecting entrepreneurial performance from the perspectives of prior experience through using the structural equation mode from data investigation of 317 TBSMEs. Empirical analysis and hypothesis verification were carried out: (1) both entrepreneurial bricolage and prior experience take the positive effect on entrepreneurial performance of TBSMEs; (2) entrepreneurial bricolage takes the positive effect on entrepreneurial experience, industrial experience and working experience dimension of entrepreneurial orientation; (3) entrepreneurial experience and industrial experience dimension of prior experience have the mediating effect between entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial performance, but working experience dimension doesn’t have.
From the perspective of RBV, the growth of TBSMEs refers to entrepreneurs actively carrying out entrepreneurial bricolage activities, to continuously accumulate their prior experience on identifying opportunities, innovating business models and satisfying new customers through the re-creation and re-construction of existing resources, which sustain a unique competitive advantage. Therefore, based on the prior experience, the paper empirically explores the intermediate path of entrepreneurial bricolage transforming into the entrepreneurial performance of TBSMEs, and reveals the mechanism of the entrepreneurial bricolage and prior experience affecting the entrepreneurial performance of TBSMEs. The following conclusions are drawn:
Firstly, in line with the results of the existing research, entrepreneurial bricolage has played an important role in promoting the improvement of entrepreneurial performance of TBSMEs. In fact, for TBSMEs with weak resource endowments, it is a key activity for entrepreneurs to overcome resource dilemmas through the creative use of resources at the expense of external resources. Therefore, entrepreneurs need to constantly practice and try to improve the level of entrepreneurial bricolage, through various bricolage strategies (parallel and selective bricolage, etc.) and their methods (such as material, institutional, network, demand, customer, etc.). In order to comprehensively acquire the heterogeneous resources in the entrepreneurial process, and achieve an effective match between the growth stage of the enterprise and the process of resource integration, thereby promoting the sustainable growth of TBSMEs.
Secondly, the entrepreneur’s prior experience has played a positive role in promoting TBSMEs. In fact,entrepreneurs having a wealth of prior experience can adapt to new environments and take on new roles, and gain credit records with external organizations, thereby increasing the TBSMEs’ success rate. Our research also found that compared with other start-ups, entrepreneurs of TBSMEs have relatively rich prior experience, not only can fully grasp the knowledge of customer problems and tap potential market demand, but also be good at identifying entrepreneurial opportunities, innovating business model, effectively improve management skills and make the right strategic choices to actively respond to the opportunities and challenges brought by the increasingly complex and dynamic external environment, which promotes the rapid growth of TBSMEs.
Thirdly, entrepreneurial bricolage helps entrepreneurs accumulate rich prior experience. In essence, entrepreneurial bricolage is an experience accumulation process in which entrepreneurs self-learn and continuously improve and innovate in order to break through resource constraints in a highly uncertain environment. The success of a small number of TBSMEs also shows that through the creative use of resources at hand and the generation of resources with differentiated value, entrepreneurs can continue to solve new problems and obtain relevant exclusive tacit knowledge on consumers, markets, competitors and products for significantly accumulating industry experience; help entrepreneurs strengthen their skills in discovering and developing entrepreneurial opportunities, integrating resource to innovate business models, and developing human resources to enrich their entrepreneurial experience; Help entrepreneurs expand their expertise in production operations, marketing, financial operations, technology research and development, human resources, and enhance their skills in strategic selection, Formulation and implementation, organizational coordination and communication, and social network construction to further increase work experience.
Finally, the entrepreneur’s prior experience partially mediates the role of entrepreneurial bricolage in promoting the entrepreneurial performance of TBSMEs. Research shows that entrepreneurs with rich entrepreneurial experience and industry experience can gain higher levels of entrepreneurial performance by vigorously carrying out entrepreneurial bricolage activities based on the practice of sustainable entrepreneurship of TBSMEs, but work experience has not become an important way to entrepreneurial bricolage transforming into entrepreneurial performance. Our researches also find that most of TBSMEs’ entrepreneurs belong to the experience on technology or sales, and their work experience especially the general management level is at a disadvantage. Therefore, entrepreneurs need to continuously enrich the accumulation of prior experience especially work experience, and constantly enhance the level of management, human resources development and management, and then achieve the resource advantage of “being out of nothing” through entrepreneurial bricolage and promote the enterprises’ innovation in a timely manner to overcome organizational flexibility that are lacking in highly structured enterprises, thus supporting TBSMEs’ with scarce resources to promote entrepreneurial performance and competitive advantage under the conditions of external resource inflows being blocked.

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A research on the influence of organizational flexibility on the growth of high-tech SMEs

Zhao Zhongwei, Li Rui, Zhu Bingjie

2019, 40(7): 247-256.

Abstract ( 243 )

With the development of science and technology, the products update faster and faster and the customer demands are changing faster，so the high-tech SMEs are facing with the environment full of fierce competition. The SMEs play an important role in the national economy and it is an important part of national economy. The SMEs have the characteristics of short average survival time, small scale, weak anti-risk ability and weak growth. The high-tech enterprise has the characteristics of knowledge, technology, talent intensive, high investment and high risk. The high-tech SMEs have both the characteristics of SMEs and high-tech enterprises. Small and mid-sized high-tech companies have become the main part of technical innovations of our country, and therefore, in the dynamic environment, research on the growth of high-tech SMEs has a profound practical significance.
Organizational flexibility is defined as an ability to respond to environmental changes, to integrate internal and external resources, to seize market opportunities, to adjust organizational strategies, and to make adjustments in time with the environment changes. Combined with the characteristics of high-tech SMEs, this paper divides organization flexibility into four dimensions which are flexible structure, flexible resources, flexible capacity and flexible culture base on the researches of other scholars. The enterprise growth is divided into scale expansion and quality optimization. High-tech SMEs are easily affected by the dynamic environment, so the environment dynamics is used as the adjustment variable measured from three angles as technology, market and government policy so that we can study the regulatory role between organizational flexibility and enterprise growth.
On the basis of theoretical research, this paper establishes the theory model with 16 hypotheses for organization flexibility impact on high-tech SMEs growth, and puts forward the 14 variable measurement indexes for organization flexibility and 6 indexes for high-tech SMEs growth to develop a questionnaire. This paper analyzes the data obtained from 297 questionnaires returned of 400 questionnaires, and checks the reliability and validity of the survey data and take multivariate regression analysis to testify the moderating effects.
The structural equation model is used to test the growth of high-tech SMEs with organizational flexibility impact. The research results of the structural equation show that resource flexibility, capability flexibility, and cultural flexibility have a positive impact both on quality optimization and scale expansion of the high-tech SMEs. The structural flexibility has no positive effect on the scale expansion, but still has a positive effect on the quality optimization of the high-tech SMEs. According to the test results, the impact degree of the four flexibilities is in the following turn: capability flexibility, resource flexibility, culture flexibility and structural flexibility.
The environmental dynamics plays a positive regulatory role in the process of structure, capacity and culture flexibility impacting on quality optimization. The environmental dynamics also plays a positive regulatory role in the process of capacity and culture flexibility impacting on scale expansion.
On the basis of empirical research, this paper puts forward the strategies to promote the growth of high-tech SMEs from the four dimensions as improving capability flexibility, resource flexibility, culture flexibility and establishing a flat organizational structure.

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Organizational learning order, technological innovation and company performance:A comparative analysis based on two cases

Xie Maohua, Wujisiguleng

2019, 40(7): 257-266.

Abstract ( 224 )

Technological innovation is the core power of enterprise development. Will it improve corporate performance? At present, there are conflicting views in the theoretical circle: some scholars’ research found that technological innovation contributes to the improvement of company performance, while other scholars’ research shows that technological innovation has no obvious effect on company performance or inhibits the improvement of company performance. We believe that the reason for the disagreement is that neglecting technological innovation is essentially a dynamic, continuous and complex process, especially ignoring the intermediary role of organizational learning in the entire technological innovation. As a new theory of enterprise management, organizational learning plays an important role in enterprise management.
Davis and Bingham (2012) have proposed that the theory of organizational learning should be studied from a "dynamic" perspective, and the concept of "organizational learning sequence " should be proposed. Through the investigation of the behavior of many enterprises, they found that the organizational learning with independent process would change with a certain scale, and the regular change could be summarized as the learning sequence of "Seeding Learning Sequence" and "Soloing LearningSequence".The former refers to the experience learning followed by reference learning, while the latter refers to continuous experience learning.
According to the existing research, Weijiang et al. further classified the change of organizational learning method, and added "Consulting Learning Sequence" and "Enhancing Learning Sequence" organizational learning method. The former refers to the interweaving of reference learning into experiential learning, and the latter refers to the learning method of learning after experience learning.
As for the regulating effect of organizational learning sequence on corporate technology innovation and corporate performance, a small number of scholars have also studied it. Langley et al. emphasized that in the process of enterprise technology innovation, we should pay attention to the study and development process of enterprise technology innovation.Bresman’s research also found that in the field of pharmaceutical enterprises, more organizational learning should be carried out to promote the output effect of technological innovation.
Based on the sequence of organizational learning, we use the method of longitudinal comparative case study to analyze the ways of promoting the performance of different organizational learning sequence in the process oftechnological innovation.
First of all, this paper attempts to answer two questions about " Why is the impact of technological innovation on enterprise performance paradoxical " and "how different technological innovation affects company performance under different organizational learning sequences". Secondly, the longitudinal case study is adopted to identify the causal relationship between constructs by combing and confirming the time sequence of key events. For this reason, we combine the relevant theoretical background above and select two traditional equipment manufacturing enterprises as typical cases for longitudinal comparative analysis. According to the characteristics of technological innovation of enterprises, they are divided into different stages. The organizational learning status, technological innovation status and company performance of each stage are analyzed in detail, and the similarities and differences between the two are compared. In the light of their differences, the organizational learning is explored. The influence mechanism of different methods on enterprise technology innovation and company performance finally constructs the process theory framework of organizational learning sequences, answering different organizational learning methods that enterprises should adopt at different stages of growth, and technological innovation can bring performance to enterprises.
The results showed that all learning methods can promote the role of technological innovation in improving corporate performance during different growth stage of different organizations, but the four kinds of organizational learning methods play a different role in the process of technological innovation，thus having different effects on enterprise performance. "Seeding Learning Sequence" may have more advantages to the enterprise in the exploration stage and growth stage, however, there is no much significance for enterprises in the stage of rapid development that adopt "Consulting Learning Sequence" and "Enhancing Learning Sequence" in the process of technological innovation to improve the company’s performance. Therefore, in the process of enterprise development, we should select different organizational learning sequence to match technological innovation according to different stages of development，so as to improve the performance of enterprises. Finally，the theoretical framework model of technological innovation and organizational learning sequence on corporate performance is established on this basis.
From the perspective of organizational learning theory, it explores the impact of technological innovation on company performance, solves the paradox of technological innovation and company performance, and expands the relevant theories of technological innovation. The paper takes the timeline as the guide and adopts the method of longitudinal analysis.
From the perspective of organizational learning theory, it studies the role of organizational learning in the process of technological innovation and the influence of different learning methods on company performance, and depicts the process picture of organizational learning sequence. Studying the impact of technological innovation on company performance provides ideas and expands the relevant theories of technological innovation. The research conclusion also has guiding significance to enriching the related theories of organizational learning and guiding enterprises to carry out scientific innovation so as to improve the performance.
The paper refines the organizational learning theory according to the learning sequence, and analyzes its impact on the company’s technological innovation, enriching the organizational learning theory. Previous studies on organizational learning mainly focused on the exploration of the essence and main characteristics of organizational learning, with emphasis on the importance of organizational learning, or only divided specific learning process (direct learning and indirect learning), and rarely divided and analyzed organizational learning as an intermediary factor.
The paper applies organizational learning theory, not only studies the mechanism of technological innovation on corporate performance, but also further deepens the differences in organizational learning theories and learning styles. It provides a more comprehensive perspective for the organization learning to be carried out in accordancewith the learning sequence, analyzes the choice of different learning sequence in technological innovation of enterprises in different growth stages, and explores the influence of different learning methods on corporate performance in different stages, which greatly enriches the relevant theories of organization learning.

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A research on the relationship between supervisory coaching behavior and employee innovation

Tu Xingyong, Lin Chenglu, Jiang Jing

2019, 40(7): 267-274.

Abstract ( 265 )

In recent years, much attention has been given to understanding employee innovation. With intensive competition and unpredictable technology changes, increasing number of organizations realize that coaching is a key element to help employees to get competitive advantage and an important prerequisite for employees promote their innovation behavior. Supervisory coaching behavior was regarded as an important antecedent of employee innovation behavior, but there has been no profound study on these relationships and influences. Moreover, promoting innovation requires extensive and effortful cognitive processing. This requirement is magnified further by the complex, ambiguous situations in which most organizational problems occur. Employees must define a diverse set of alternative solutions. Innovation necessitates that this activity is completed effectively. It is unlikely, therefore, that innovation outcomes will be realized without a large degree of support from organizations and organizational coaches. To provide this support, supervisory coaching must understand the cognitive requirements of innovation. Regrettably, it is unclear whether there is a positive relationship between supervisory coaching and employee innovation. In view of the existing research gaps, this paper constructs a mediated moderation model based on the cognition theory to test how supervisory coaching behavior facilitate and promote employee innovation.
Moreover, many studies have showed that employee innovation has been considered as a critical factor of organizational continuous innovation and breakthrough, as a consequence, how to improve employee innovation isone of the important problems in theory and practice circles. This paper proposes and testes a moderated mediation model in which supervisory coaching and critical thinking influence employee innovation. To test the model, data were collected from 267 dyads of employees and their immediate leaders. Of 267 participants, 60.7% were male, 39.3% were female. From age structure to see, of 51.3% employees under the age of 30, it means that young people are in the majority. In term of the education, 61.4% have bachelors’ degrees or lower degrees.
The regression analysis results show that: (1) critical thinking partially mediates the relationship between supervisory coaching behavior and employee innovation; (2) perceived leader support for innovation moderates the relationship between critical thinking and employee innovation; (3) the moderating role of perceived leader support for innovation on the relationship between supervisory coaching behavior and employee innovation is partly mediated by critical thinking.
This article reviewed the relevant literature onemployee innovation and suggested how supervisory coaching behavior may facilitate and promote employee innovation by influencing the critical thinking as a cognitive process. This paper was not intended as a comprehensive review of all the factors that may influence employee innovation. Rather, we used the employee innovation as a guide, reviewing the factors that may affect critical thinking as a cognitive process that must be engaged in to solve innovation, and how supervisory coaching behavior can help encourage this process in their subordinates. Our discussion of the cognitive processes necessary for innovation implied a somewhat linear progression, it should be noted that most cognitive models of innovation suggest a more cyclical approach where the innovation solver may return to pervious processes if needed. While the outcomes of process occurring early on will determine the effectiveness of later process, it is possible to return to critical thinking and make corrections at any point in the employee innovation. Recognizing that critical thinking may be necessary and encouraging employees to do so, as well as encouraging employees to make changes based on this process is another way a supervisory coaching may facilitate employee innovation.
The conclusions contribute to the literature in several ways. First, this paper offers a new approach to the influence of supervisory coaching by examining employee innovation. Specifically, while researchers have long pointed to the significance of cognitive process in enhancing innovation, in this paper we sought to provide a more parsimonious way to assess critical thinking. In so doing, we were able to determine that critical thinking is important in contributing to employee innovation. The results indicate thatsupervisory coaching behavior who model and encourage critical thinking. Importantly, our findings indicate that supervisory coaching behavior and critical thinking are both important contributors to an enhanced capacity for innovation. Second, the results concerning the moderating effect of perceived leader support for innovation on the relationship between supervisory coaching and employee innovation contribute to the integration of cognition theory. To sum up, this study deepens our understanding of supervisory coaching behavior by examining the mediating effect of critical thinking and moderating effect of perceived leader support for innovation in one theoretical framework.
The paper also provides some implications for human resource management. First, the lend support to previous work showing that critical thinking may be beneficial for engagement in cognitive processes associated with employee innovation. Second, the results of this paper indicate thatsupervisory coaching behavior facilitate employee critical thinking, so coach selection may include a way to assess a coach’s attitudes toward critical thinking.
This paper is not without limitations, and thus its findings must be interpreted with caution. Although we provided theoretical reasoning for our model, the extent to which cause-effect relationships may be inferred is limited. It could be claimed that individual who have a high innovation ability are likely to take on critical thinking than those who possess low-level capacities of critical thinking. Similar to the extant body of leadership that uses the same approach as in this paper for assessingsupervisory coaching behavior, we do not know what additional factors influence employees’ perception of coaching behavior. Therefore, one could speculate that individual who are willing to and critically thinking. Another important issue that has not been addressed in this paper is that of team innovation. The current studies focus on individual innovation. However, the interest in team innovation has increased in recent years. Testing the role of supervisory coaching behavior and critical thinking on team innovation is valuable to our understanding of these constructs and their influence on innovation. Future studies should evaluate the construct at a team level, adding to our understanding of the multilevel nature of innovation in organizations. The last important one is that the paper only examines the corporations in China, cautions should be exercised in generalizing our findings to other countries.

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A research on the entrepreneurial orientation decision in new ventures based on technological trajectories

Zhang Shuo, Liu Wei

2019, 40(7): 275-284.

Abstract ( 197 )

With the and reform of technology, the new ventures based on new technology are becoming the main support for the economy development. While, there are more challenges and opportunities the new ventures should deal with. In this case, the entrepreneurial orientation plays a very important role. Entrepreneurship is a kind of essential strategy. Since the lack of resource in new ventures, the entrepreneurial orientation M&A behaviors are becoming the main way to implement the strategy for pursuing the new technologies and the new business. Even though many factors may influence the strategy decision-making, considering the characteristics of new ventures, the composition of board and technology trait should be paid adequate attention.
In order to figure out the effect and mechanism of board and technology on entrepreneurial orientation in newventures,the paper selected the companies listed Chi-Next before December 2012 as the samples. The total number of samples is 371, and the main data are from the company reports. Due to the lag in decision-making, the paper collected the data of M&A till the end of December 2015. Then, this paper used the regression analysis to do exam the hypothesis.
As there are two main forces in the new venture’s board- the founders and the investors, the conflict and complement resource will both make effect on the strategy decision-making. From the composition of board, this paper tried to find out the impact of openness of new venture founders and participation of institutional investors on the entrepreneurial orientation strategy decision. The founder of new venture is the representative of the founding team, most of whom is the technological professionalism and has the dual status of chairman and general manager. His personal characteristics will affect the strategic decision-making of the company. So, one of the main research question is whether the openness of founder can influence the new ventures entrepreneurial orientation decision. Meanwhile, the founding team of new ventures has homogeneity in education, industry experience, and functional majors, which is relatively weak in human resources and management knowledge. While, institutional investors can bring key resources such as capital and information to supervise and guide the strategic decision-making of the enterprise by possessing higher investment levels and capital operating capabilities. Unlike founding shareholders, institutional investors pay more attention to short-term interest. And the difference of interest appeal will also cause conflict that will be harmful to the strategy decision-making. Therefore, the second research question is how the institutional investor affect on the new ventures entrepreneurial orientation decision, and if there is the interaction effect with the founder’s openness. Further more, the technology is the basis for enterprises to formulate effective competition strategies. The development of high-tech new ventures depends on technological trajectory. New venture on different technological trajectories have enormous differences in terms of technology sources and technology strategies, which determines the possibility of entrepreneurial orientation strategy implement. So, verifying the different results of board composition on entrepreneurial orientation strategy in new venture based on the technological trajectory in also one of the main research question.
The results showed that: the openness of new venture’s founder had a positive relationship with the entrepreneurial orientation strategy, and the participation of institutional investors also had a positive relationship with the entrepreneurial orientation strategy. Further more, there was a complementary effect with the openness of founder and participate of institutional investors on the entrepreneurial orientation strategy. That’s because the founder with open characteristics has a more open vision and prefers to explore new technologies and products, which can promote entrepreneurial M&A. The institutional investors in the new venture have strong capital operation ability and short-term interest pursuit motivation, and can assist the founders to make entrepreneurial M&A decisions.
While, the effects above had significant differences under different technological trajectories. The openness of funder always had positive influence on the entrepreneurial orientation strategy among the five technological trajectories. That’s mean no matter in which technological trajectory, the openness of founder is a significant factor that push the new venture pursue the entrepreneurial orientation strategy. But the influence of institutional investor and the interaction effect showed the differences. In the supplier-led and scale-intensive enterprises, the institutional investor participation and the interaction was not significant. That’s for the technology acquisition mode of enterprises determines that the existence of institutional investors has little effect on the entrepreneurial oriented M&A; While, there was a significant complementary effect in the information-intensive and specialized supplier firms. Institutional investors can offer companies more opportunities for M&A; In science-based firms, the participation of institutional investor had a negative impact on entrepreneurial orientation strategy decision. The decision of enterprise entrepreneurship oriented M&A is dominated by founders with strong technical background and professional level.
Based on resource theory, technological trajectory theory and strategic theory, this paper put forward the mechanism of influence of founders and institutional investors of new ventures on the decision direction. It also tested the effect of the technological trajectory of the new ventures on the above effects, which has the following theoretical and practical contributions:
This paper used exploratory M&A decision to measure the entrepreneurial strategic behavior to enrich the corporate strategic theory. And this paper explored the motivation of strategic decision of new ventures with discussing the influencing factors and effects from the perspective of founder openness and institutional investor participation. Moreover, this paper involved in the technology trajectory to illustrate the dependence of new ventures’ development strategy on the technology source and technology strategy. The research of this paper also has important enlightenment for practice and policy making. For new ventures, the fierce competition environment and competition pressure led them tend to adopt the entrepreneurial approach to enter new industries and occupy new markets as soon as possible, and the openness of founder played a positive influence. However, many problems such as entrepreneurs’ blind self-confidence and lack of experience in capital operations resulted in a large number of new ventures ended in failure. The role of institutional investors introduced by new enterprises in enterprises is to promote entrepreneurial decision-making rather than to supervise and balance the decision-making power. Therefore, new ventures should try to involve various types of shareholders to improve governance mechanisms and increase their decision-making capabilities. Finally, the technological trajectory combines the technological direction and strategic choice of the new ventures, which reveals that the new ventures need to depend on the technological trajectory when making strategic decisions.

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Thoughts on Chinese universities’ international scientific research cooperation in the construction of “Double Top Universities”

Qiu Jiaxi, Mao Xueou

2019, 40(7): 285-288.

Abstract ( 383 )

Strengthening international cooperation in scientific research is one of the main contents of our double top construction. Colleges and universities should increase the strength of international cooperation and grasp the international frontier of scientific research to meet the needs of our national strategies. In order to build up some advanced training bases in the universities, we also should strive to train international academic masters and statesmen in the process of building universities. So starting from the needs of serving the major national strategies by strengthening international cooperation, we will learn from the advanced thinking and technology of the world, absorb them and make them our own. At the same time, we should understand the latest trends of the discipline, avoid repeating the path, and stand on the shoulders of giants to propose innovative research topics.
In order to get to the international frontier of relevant scientific research, and build the university into a first-class training base, a first-class research institution and a first-class attack team, this paper will takes Department C of T University as an example. T University is one of the earliest and most popular universities in China to carry out international cooperation and exchange. It has always attached great importance to international cooperation in scientific research, and a large number of scholars come to the university to carry out cooperation and exchange every year. At the same time, T University sends a large number of teachers and students to the world’s top universities for cooperative research every year. We will review the achievements in international scientific research and cooperation of Department C, and find out the problems and shortcomings in order to promote the development of China’s scientific research to a world-class level by improving the quality of personnel training and scientific research, as well as the cooperation and exchanges with famous universities.
The Year of2018 is a crucial year for construction of "double top universities". Colleges and universities should follow closely the idea of deepening international cooperation proposed by the central government and strengthen scientific research cooperation and exchanges with world-class universities. We will develop new science, create new knowledge and technologies, and strive to become one of the best in the world. It is imperative for Chinese colleges and universities to make efforts to increase international cooperation in scientific research, which is also the internal development demand of colleges and universities. Through the international cooperation of scientific research with foreign high-quality institutions or schools, we can further improve the international influence of Chinese university disciplines, create a good academic atmosphere, and better serve the national development strategy. it will further promote the development of colleges and universities to the world-class level, further improve the quality of talent training and scientific research level, and further strengthen the close cooperation and exchanges between local Chinese schools and internationally renowned universities.

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