Science Research Management

Consolidated goodwill and innovation capability of enterprises

Yang Dan

2021, 42(5): 1-11.

Abstract ( 533 )

A large amount of goodwill has become a hidden danger for some companies, but there is little literature to discuss the relationship between consolidated goodwill and corporate innovation capability. Is the consolidated goodwill the catalyst to create future profits or the poison contained crisis, and how does it affect the corporate innovation capability? From the perspective of "value creation view" and "value destruction view", this paper tries to analyze the different economic consequences of consolidated goodwill under different scales, as well as the specific mechanisms which affect the corporate innovation capability. This article may help understand the nature of consolidated goodwill and the influential factors of corporate innovation.
Using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2018, this paper tests the effect of consolidated goodwill on innovation capability. With the nonlinear model, it is found that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the scale of consolidated goodwill and corporate innovation capability. And the critical value of consolidated goodwill is about 10%, which is about the fourth quintile of Gdasset (denoting consolidated goodwill divided by assets). If the consolidated goodwill of a firm is below this threshold, it will have a positive effect on corporate innovation capability. On the contrary, it will damage the innovation capability of firms. Furthermore, the effect of consolidated goodwill in promoting innovation is more pronounced among the companies audited by the international "Big Four" accounting firm. Mechanism tests show that the consolidated goodwill has an impact on corporate innovation capability through two channels: external financing competence and internal collaborative competence. Specifically, the author uses debt cost and firm value to measure external financing competence and internal collaborative competence respectively.
To confirm the reliability of empirical results, this paper conducts several robustness tests. First, this paper uses the Tobit model to alleviate endogeneity problems. Second, this paper tests how excess goodwill affects corporate innovation. And the results show that the impact of excess goodwill on R&D input and patent output is significantly negative, which is consistent with the main results. Finally, this paper uses Kendall τ test to verify the impact of different consolidated goodwill scales on innovation, and the conclusion still holds. According to the above research conclusions, consolidated goodwill has different economic consequences due to its different scales. When the scale of consolidated goodwill is in a reasonable range, consolidated goodwill will positively influence corporate innovation by affecting external financing competence and internal collaborative competence, which supports the "value creation view". Otherwise, it supports the "value destruction view".
Therefore, the policy recommendation of this article is as follows: investors and companies should rationally treat consolidated goodwill. The future profitability represented by the scale of consolidated goodwill is management′s estimation based on the current situation, and there is a certain degree of uncertainty about whether it can be realized or not later. Therefore, it is recommended that when carrying out mergers and acquisitions, companies can hire high-quality auditors, and pay attention to the reasonable size of the consolidated goodwill. This article not only enriches the literature on the economic consequences of consolidated goodwill and the influential factors of corporate innovation but also helps companies and investors understand the nature of consolidated goodwill and provide a reference for their decisions.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

The merger and acquisition of S&T enterprises and their innovation incentives

Zhang Bing, Sun Hongyan, Cheng Xinsheng, Li Qian, Huang Lixin

2021, 42(5): 12-20.

Abstract ( 434 )

How to effectively integrate the internal resources of enterprises after merger and acquisition, so as to realize the sustainable development of innovation, is an important problem faced by S&T enterprises. The existing literature mainly discusses the influencing factors of technological innovation ability of enterprises after merger and acquisition from the perspective of the characteristics of merger and acquisition enterprises and the degree of resource matching between merger and acquisition parties. However, the above literature is still unable to answer how to maximize and release the innovation potential of merger and acquisition parties through the optimization of management and governance means, so as to produce the positive effect of “1 + 1 > 2”. In view of this, this paper uses the method of multiple case study, combined with grounded theory, and takes innovation incentives as the starting point, focusing on the following three issues: what factors should be considered in innovation incentives after merger and acquisition of S&T enterprises? What is the specific incentive mechanism for innovation? How to ensure the effectiveness of innovation incentives after merger and acquisition?
When the merger and acquisition enterprises carry out innovation incentives, it needs to focus on five key factors, including inclusiveness and cohesion, cultural exchange, equal treatment, ensuring development, and medium and long-term incentive. Accordingly, the innovation incentives mechanism after the merger and acquisition of S&T enterprises includes authority establishment mechanism, employee cooperation mechanism, employee participation in decision-making mechanism, employee development mechanism, and interest binding mechanism. The establishment of the company′s internal leadership needs to be carried out with the contribution of the community, emphasizing work efficiency and innovative ideas. At the employee level, we should not only encourage employees in different technical fields to actively carry out project cooperation, but also support employees to participate in innovation decision-making, and provide a good working environment for employees to carry out innovation activities through the development of a perfect employee vocational training system, so as to improve employees′ organizational identity. After merger and acquisition, we also need to actively carry out innovation incentives work, such as restricted stock incentive, post equity incentive, innovative achievement oriented equity incentive, especially for R & D personnel, multiple incentive forms are allowed to coexist; the implementation of medium and long-term incentive for innovation subject is conducive to resolving the interest differences between knowledge workers and shareholders, and thus promoting the realization of long-term development goals of enterprises. Through the dual role of organizational identity and interest binding, we can stimulate and shape the motivation and behavior of knowledge workers, so as to promote the innovation and development of S&T enterprises after merger and acquisition.
In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the incentive mechanism, on the one hand, the merger and acquisition enterprises need to overcome the "outsider disadvantage" and establish a relationship from trust to commitment with the target enterprises, so as to realize the transformation from "outsider" to "insider". On the other hand, the merger and acquisition enterprises should adhere to the policy of "tolerating short-term failure and encouraging long-term success", and implement effective innovation incentives based on medium and long-term incentive according to the particularity of the target enterprises’ internal knowledge staff.
The results not only expand the scope of application of innovation incentives, but also supplement the empirical evidence of integration after merger and acquisition. It is also of great significance for enterprises in social practice to integrate after merger and acquisition through effective implementation of innovation incentives, so as to achieve technological catch-up and transcendence.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Avoiding operational risks in technological strategic alliances: Autonomous cooperation or government support?

Yang Zhenning, Wu Chen

2021, 42(5): 21-30.

Abstract ( 229 )

In the context of diversified markets with technological changes and increased competition, enterprises will inevitably improve their competitiveness through technological innovation in order to survive and develop. By building technological strategic alliances, companies can collaborate with universities and research institutions to respond to advances in new technologies, and to make it easier to access key resources which enables them to achieve their business goals and enhance their competitive advantages with higher efficiency. Technological strategic alliances are organizations in which partners share resources, improve the efficiency of technological innovation and jointly create value. However, their innovation activities are often accompanied by various risks. In practice, many alliances fail to achieve the expected results. How to lower the operation risk of the alliances and optimize the cooperation is not only a frontier problem in theory, but also a difficult problem in practice? This paper studies strategic alliances′ operational risk, collaboration and the factors that affect the stability of the alliance. This has certain guiding value for the theoretical research and practical development of the technological strategic alliance.
Firstly, this paper defines and analyzes three operational risks (risk of conflict of interests, risk of conflict from disagreement and risk of dependency in alliances), coordinated cooperation mode of the alliances (autonomous cooperation and government support) and the stability of the alliance. Then five hypotheses are proposed: H1: The risk of conflict of interests in the operation of the alliance has a significantly low impact on the stability of the alliance. H2: The risk of conflict from disagreement in the operation of the alliance has a significantly low impact on the stability of the alliance. H3: There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the risk of dependency in alliances and the stability of the alliance. H4: The coordinated cooperation mode of the alliances can positively adjust the relationship between the risk of conflict of interests, conflict from disagreement and the stability of the alliance. H5: The coordinated cooperation mode of the alliances weakens the inverse U-shaped effect of the risk of dependency in alliances on the stability of the alliance. This study collected data through questionnaires. From June to December 2016, with the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and its industrial technology innovation strategic alliance evaluation system, we conducted surveys by sending e-mails and on-site questionnaires. In the end, 400 questionnaires were issued and 324 valid questionnaires were obtained. Through empirical study, the results show that: Firstly, in the running process of technological strategic alliances, the risk of conflict of interests and conflict from disagreement will reduce the stability of the alliances. The risk of dependency in alliances can improve the alliances performance in early stage. However, as the degree of dependency increases, the independent innovation ability of the involved parties may be damaged, thereby reducing alliance performance.
Secondly, autonomous cooperation within the alliance can positively adjust the relationship between the risk of conflict of interests and conflict from disagreement and alliance performance in the operation of technological strategic alliances. Moreover, it can weaken the inverted U-shaped effect of the risk of dependency in alliances on alliance performance. The effect of government support on the relationship between operational risk and stability of technological strategic alliances is not obvious. The conclusions of this paper have guiding value for the technological strategic alliance and its members. The collaborative efforts of members of the technological strategic alliance to create new knowledge and discover new opportunities to a large extent depend on the knowledge sharing among partners, but this also leads to that knowledge and technology brought to the alliance by members is easily accessible to their partners. It can increase the motivation of the other party′s betrayal, the risk of knowledge leakage and embezzlement. The resulting losses are harmful to the stability of the alliance, so technical confidentiality measures and other risk prevention measures should be increased. In addition, alliance members form alliances for common strategic goals, but members generally set goals based on their own positions. It leads to differences in the cognition of the alliance′s strategic goals among members, and some members even will have goals and expectations that are not in line with the actual situation, which will affect the stability of the alliance. Therefore, in formulating the strategic goals of the alliance, we must fully consider the positions of the members, so that different members can be as consistent as possible in the understanding of the same strategic goals of the alliance. Also, distribution of profit in the process of alliance development should be timely adjusted so that a member is rewarded in response to its contribution. It can reduce the risk brought by profit distribution.
Thirdly, the alliance can encourage members to communicate regularly by adopting reasonable rules and regulations, encourage members to increase resources investment to the alliance, maintain or establish alliance entities, etc. These measures can alleviate conflicts among alliance partners, reduce alliance risks, improve the enthusiasm of members to participate in alliances, and increase the possibility of success of the alliance. Government support has a direct positive impact on the stability of technological strategic alliances, but its adjustment effect on the relationship between operational risk and alliance stability is not obvious. It indicates that the government as a guide for the formation of strategic alliances, in order to promote the formation and development of the alliance, the government should take some effective methods and measures to support the alliance, and provide financial support and guidance for the alliance, which can promote the stability of strategic alliances. The government provides effective external guarantees for the development of the alliance. However, the technological strategic alliance is a multi-party cooperation, so management is difficult to unify, and jurisdiction of government is not clear inside the alliance. Therefore, the government has little role in regulating the risks caused by various conflicts in the operation of the alliance. The Chinese government should set up a special organization to manage the technological strategic alliance, strengthen the supervision over the cooperative behaviors of all parties in the operation of the alliance, timely find conflicts, reduce risks and promote the stable development of the alliance.
Finally, the members of the alliance still need to invest human and material resources in independent innovation to form their own core competitiveness while acquiring the external knowledge shared by the alliance partners. And the alliance needs to improve the intellectual property protection system and corresponding regulations, so as to provide a basis for determining the division of ownership and use rights of intellectual property generated within the alliance.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on the driving pattern of innovation in China enterprises′ internationalization

Xie Xianda, Cheng Cong

2021, 42(5): 31-38.

Abstract ( 262 )

The number of China′s enterprises taking internationalization strategy has shown rapid growth. However, compared with the investment efficiency of the major foreign direct investment enterprises in the world, the foreign direct investment of Chinese enterprises is still at a low level, which is reflected in the company′s ability to enhance innovation through internationalization strategies. The effect is not obvious. At the same time, due to the different goals of Chinese enterprises in implementing the international catch-up strategy, they have significant differences in the implementation of innovation strategies. Based on the review of international enterprise innovation related research, this paper proposes three hypothetical elements of the enterprise internationalization process innovation model: innovation motivation, resource matching and adaptability. It is considered that the combination of these three elements forms different configurations of the international innovation mode.
The study used the Yangtze River Delta as a sample source, conducted in-depth investigations of some enterprises engaged in international operations in the region, and visited 51 research samples, and then used qualitative comparative analysis methods to innovate in their internationalization process. The decision-making model was analyzed to identify the antecedent conditional configuration that determines the effectiveness of innovation in the process of internationalization of Chinese enterprises. In the research, we set the consistency threshold of innovation results in the process of enterprise internationalization to not less than 0.8, and obtained the initial antecedent conditional configuration, ie complex solution, of innovation satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the process of enterprise internationalization. After that, combined with the three types of driving factors of innovative behavior in the process of internationalization of Chinese enterprises, the simple conditions of counterfactual preconditions are set, and the simple and counterfactual analysis and the difficult fact analysis are used to obtain the simple solution and the optimal solution. When a variable appears in both the concise solution and the optimization solution, it is recorded as a core condition; if the variable appears only in the optimization solution and does not appear in the concise solution, it is recorded as an edge condition.
The research show that because enterprises have significant differences in the combination of factors such as innovation motivation, resource matching and adaptability, the innovation decisions in the process of internationalization of Chinese enterprises can be divided into five modes. We define a mature market-driven innovation model that attaches great importance to soft resource matching and industrial chain integrity requirements, and an emerging market-driven innovation model that emphasizes hard resource matching, and attaches importance to technology and management advantages in enterprise internationalization, while attaching importance to the soft resource matching is called the internal driving innovation mode. It is called the speculative market-driven innovation mode, which emphasizes the internationalization style of enterprise executives and the matching problem of enterprise soft resources. These research conclusions are a complete exposition of the innovation mechanism in the process of internationalization of Chinese enterprises, which has rich theoretical significance, and also has a good practical enlightenment significance for how Chinese enterprises implement innovative decision-making suitable for the internationalization strategy of enterprises according to their own situations.
At the end of the paper, the limitations of this study are explained. The main limitations are as follows: Firstly, due to the limitation of the detailed data, the data of this paper is mainly based on the subjective judgment of the executives responsible for international operations. The role of executives in subjective emotional factors in corporate judgment makes the research data subjectively biased. In addition, although this paper analyzes the innovation strategy in the internationalization of enterprises from the perspectives of internationalization motivation, resource matching and adaptability, it still has certain limitations. In the future, it may be necessary to further explore this from the perspectives of system and culture mechanism. Finally, the data in this paper mainly comes from the Yangtze River Delta region, which makes the application of the antecedent conditions of this paper restricted, which needs further study in the future research.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Influence of economic crisis on firms′ returns from R&D: An empirical analysis based on Perez′s great surge model

Su Yiyi, Wang Min

2021, 42(5): 39-46.

Abstract ( 547 )

The extant literature has primarily focused on the negative effects of economic crisis on firm R&D and innovation. Yet, some researchers hold a more optimistic view about the impact of economic crises on firm R&D. Based on Schumpeterian theory of innovation, Perez proposed Great Surge Model, which argues that technology bubbles would first install a huge innovation potential and then be squeezed by the crisis, eventually leading to the eventual arrival of a "golden age". To be specific, a great surge of development is depicted as being driven by a technological revolution and composed of two periods. The first is the installation period, during which new technologies emerge from the lab and grow to a large scale, accompanied by frenzied venture capitalist and speculation. This results in a major technology bubble followed by a crash. The second period is the deployment period, a time of creative construction that spreads the benefits of the new technologies and techno-economic paradigm across the economy, enables a global golden age and ends when maturity is reached. In other words, the ensuing golden age would be driven by a revolution in the ICT (information and communication technology). The years between the burst of the bubbles and the start of the deployment period is termed the turning point, involving a reconstruction of the whole economic system to unleash the potential of the technological revolution. In summary, Perez pointed out that economic crisis may bring about the shift of sociotechnical paradigm, thereby unleashing the golden age. Although it receives wide attention in academia and policy arena, Perez′s model is not without criticism.
Our study made an initial endeavor to test the Perez′s model empirically through a worldwide comparison of returns to R&D before and after the crisis. First, we hypothesize that returns to R&D increase after the crisis compared with the period before it. Furthermore, Perez has predicted the ripple-like pattern of each technological revolution as represented by the divergent rates of growth across industries, countries and regions – some dynamic pioneers of the revolution take a lead and then slow down, while those laggards accelerate. Correspondingly, our study examines the diffusion of the technological revolution by using the cross-firm, sector and country variations in changes in returns to R&D after the crisis.
To investigate these predictions, our study employed the data from the Bureau van Dijk (BvD) global database, which collects financial and operational information for publicly traded firms across countries. Our panel dataset includes 52,638 company-years from 63 countries for the period 1986-2014. After selection, we finally yielded a sample including 20,073 firms and an unbalanced panel with 117,774 observations (firm-years).
The study has several findings. The results show that, after the crisis, (1) firms obtain more returns from R&D for both growth and profits; (2) low-market-share firms are more likely to enjoy a higher level of returns to R&D than high-market-share ones; (3) low-leveraged firms are more likely to enjoy a higher level of returns to R&D than high-leveraged ones; and (4) developing and developed economy-based firms show insignificant differences in returns to R&D. The results consistently demonstrated that firms benefit more from R&D investments, irrespective of performance type (growth and profits), after the crisis, strongly supporting the Perez′s Great Surge Model.
Our findings have theoretical significance. First of all, our study makes important contributions to the extant innovation research by exploring the effect of economic crises on firm R&D and innovation. Using a panel dataset, our study represents a large-scale empirical examination of Perez′s prediction of golden age after the crisis. Moreover, our results go beyond Perez′s original model by revealing the contingent relationship between R&D and firm performance in the post-crisis period.
Our findings inform both managers and policy-makers. First, the policy focus needs to move from fighting the economic crisis to unleashing technological potential. Second, if the recent prosperity of entrepreneurship has resulted from the technological revolution of the fifth surge, a critical criterion for anticipating entrepreneurial performance is to see how well new ventures identify market opportunities to deploy the core technologies of the fifth surge. Third, best practices that were identified previously need to be revisited, including the ways of monitoring and industry recipes.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on the competition and countermeasures of the integrated circuit industry development in China

Yang Daozhou, Miao Xinyuan, Qiu Yijie

2021, 42(5): 47-56.

Abstract ( 372 )

As the core foundation of the modern electronic information industry, the integrated circuit industry is a strategic and pioneering industry that supports China′s economic and social development and safeguards national security. It is also a key force to promote the transformation and upgrading of China′s high-tech manufacturing industry and achieve high-quality development. China′s integrated circuit industry development road is tortuous, although in recent years under the joint efforts shows a tendency of the high-speed growth, but there is still the key link of industrial chain multiple missing or weak competitiveness, core technology and core products are heavily dependent on imports. At present, it is also facing restrictions and blockades imposed by Western developed countries led by the United States. All this has had positive and negative effects on the development of China′s integrated circuit industry. On the one hand, China′s integrated circuit industry is facing a huge challenge and has entered a difficult historical transition period. On the other hand, the state attaches great importance to the IC industry and supports it with unprecedented strength. The historical transition period is also a precious development opportunity period.
This paper, on the basis of reviewing the existing research, studies the integrated circuit industry in China according to the theory of sectoral system of innovation, which include such four systems as the knowledge technology, policy, system environment and innovation network. Based on this framework, this paper studies the current competition faced by the integrated circuit industry in China under the new situation in four dimensions. In the dimension of knowledge and technology, this paper probes into the technical basis of IC industry design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, as well as special equipment and special materials. In the dimension of policy system, this paper analyzes the national strategic guidance and industrial policy system. In the dimension of institutional environment, it analyzes China′s institutional advantages, market scale advantages, the current international situation and industrial ecology. In the dimension of innovation network, this paper analyzes the relationship between enterprises, universities, research institutes and government.
Finally, based on the above analysis results, the strategies are proposed that should be adopted for the development of China′s IC industry at the present stage. At present, facing the unprecedented challenge and development opportunity, the integrated circuit industry in China need to consolidate technical foundation, perfecting the policy system, optimize the institutional environment, guide the innovation network system and other measures to intervene in the induction of industry development, with national will and market forces to promote industrial growth, rising industry international competitiveness. The following corresponding strategies will be put forward for the development of China′s IC industry under the new situation according to the competitive situation analysis framework of the IC industry constructed above.
The research finds out that by adhering to the concept of system and original orientation, adopting basic research technique and technology development route of industrial practices, the IC industry should perfect the industrial policy support system and service system, explore actively the existing framework of emerging tools, give full play to the advantages of the system, concentrate on making breakthrough in the weak links, strengthen the cooperation with the industry in the United States, center on the leading enterprises which lead the innovation chain development, and form modern innovation network system. These are the four coping strategies for China′s IC industry to break through the dilemma it is facing, and to enhance its international competitiveness.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on the influence path of network ties, resource acquisition and organizational learning interaction on strategic performance——A longitudinal case study based on the Great Wall Motor Company#br#

Xie Maohua, Zhao Yuanyuan, Liu Yuanyang

2021, 42(5): 57-69.

Abstract ( 260 )

In the context of the knowledge economy, companies often embed intricate networks in different ways to establish cooperative relationships with other organizations. They have changed from a simple binary relationship to a complex network composed of multiple entities. With the diversification of the environment in which enterprises are located, scholars have studied the performance results of enterprise network connections from multiple perspectives. The more consistent conclusions are: the value of network connections must be higher than the simple sum of multiple links, which in turn improves the performance of enterprises. However, some scholars believe that simple network connection cannot directly affect enterprise performance, and the role of resource acquisition and organizational learning ability in this process cannot be ignored.
In view of the above differences, this paper believes that most of the existing researches are constrained to explore the direct impact of the characteristics of linkage structure on enterprise performance, and fail to explore the internal mechanism of network linkage to enhance the strategic performance path of enterprises from the perspective of relevant theory. From the perspective of resource-based view and organizational learning theory, the paper adopts the case study method, takes Great Wall motor company as the research object, and focuses on the issue of "how to improve the strategic performance of enterprises through the interaction between the structural characteristics of different connection stages and different key resources and organizational learning forms". The resource-based theory believes that the heterogeneous resources of the enterprise enable the enterprise to have the competitive advantage that other enterprises do not have, and with this resource, it can obtain long-term excess profits. At the same time, the development of network theory has expanded the connotation of resource-based view, indicating that heterogeneous resources also exist in embedded networks. With embedded network relations, synergies bring about the sharing of advantageous resources and information between enterprises, and promote the improvement of enterprise performance. Meanwhile, the activities of organizational learning are no longer limited to the inside of the enterprise, but between the enterprise and other entities. The existing research also shows that the network embedding method affects the innovation performance through the enterprise learning ability, and the relationship embedding directly promotes the technical innovation performance on the one hand, and promotes the performance improvement through the bridge function of the learning ability.
The paper further refines the enterprise network theory from the perspective of social embedding, and divides the social embedding theory into two dimensions, namely "relationship embedding " and "structural embedding ". The relationship embedding dimension focuses on the power of mutual trust between the two parties. Structural embedding is focused on analysis of problems of multi-level structure of network connection between the main body contact, the coupling interaction and connection between subject the location in the network connection, generally through the network connection size, center degree and intensity index measurement. Aiming at the interactive mechanism of inquiry, this paper chooses three dimensions of network connection scale, connection centrality and connection intensity to measure the network connection structure and interpret the structural changes of enterprise network connection in the development process. According to resource-based perspective theory, the difference in firm performance is related to the heterogeneity of resources. Early research pointed out the impact of material resources and knowledge technology resources on corporate strategic choices, which in turn affected corporate performance.
In the study, it is proposed that companies pass tangible and intangible assets. Resources gain competitive advantage for companies, which in turn promotes organizational learning. At the same time, relational resources play a role in building trust and expectations among enterprises in enterprise network connectivity. In order to enhance the effect of enterprise performance, integrated the characteristics of the existing research and the research object of this paper, the key resources of the enterprise through the network connection are divided into the following three types: material resources, relationship between resources, knowledge and technical resources, according to the research of Wernerfelt, combination method is divided into extra resources combination and complementary resources combination. Considering that enterprise network connection not only affects financial performance, but also has a great impact on internal processes and customer groups, etc., we adopt Kaplan′s balanced scorecard to measure the strategic performance of an enterprise from the perspectives of finance, customer, internal operation, learning and growth. The purpose of designing such research content and ideas in this paper is to break through the limitations of previous research from a single structural perspective or resource acquisition perspective, breaking the limitations of process research with a single dimension of time, combined with existing manufacturing. The purpose of designing such research content and ideas in the paper is to break through the limitations of previous studies from a single structural perspective or resource acquisition perspective, breaking the limitations of process research that is purely a single dimension of time.
We also combines the existing manufacturing enterprises to form a certain network connection phenomenon, for the network connection growth stage and maturity stage, through the interaction identification of network connection, resource acquisition and organizational learning, the network connection drive resource acquisition and re-induction connection structure change, along with the change of organizational learning mode, promote the co-evolution mechanism of enterprise strategic performance, and refine the process of network connection .Therefore, from the current theoretical research, network linkage can improve corporate performance, in which resource acquisition and organizational learning activities play a mediating role.
However, the following issues still need to be further explored theoretically: firstly, what is the logical relationship between network connection and resource acquisition and organizational learning? Second, in the network connection, how to improve enterprise performance through resource acquisition and organizational learning. What is the path? To this end, this paper uses the case study method to study the differences in network connection, resource acquisition and organizational learning in different stages of the enterprise, that is, the dynamic change mechanism of the interaction process of "network connection, resource acquisition and organizational learning" to promote enterprise performance improvement.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

An empirical study of the relationship between entrepreneurial cognition and strategic variety

Zhou Jian, Wang Qingjin, Zhou Xue

2021, 42(5): 70-78.

Abstract ( 256 )

With the change of consumer demand, the progress of Internet technology and the acceleration of industrial fluctuation, the complexity of entrepreneurial environment faced by new ventures is increasing, which requires that new ventures can continuously innovate products and services to develop diversified entrepreneurial opportunities and create value. More and more new ventures begin to change their entrepreneurial strategy model, gradually changing from strategic simplicity to strategic diversity. In practice, "Enabling" and "Platform" entrepreneurial business models are increasingly sought after by new ventures, such as the "Iron Man" business model of millet hardware + new retail + Internet, the "Handu Power" brand Incubation Platform of Handu clothing house, Haier′s Creator Laboratory, etc. These entrepreneurial business models have the ability to develop and support multiple entrepreneurial opportunities and take the lead in the competition. It is found that strategic diversity can help entrepreneurs acquire multiple market and competitive information, develop diversified market opportunities and accelerate organizational learning process. Therefore, the key to further study is how to cultivate and realize strategic diversity more effectively in the increasingly dynamic and complex entrepreneurial environment. In other words, in the process of shaping and realizing the diversity of entrepreneurship strategies, what are the key factors driving the impact?
Most of the existing studies on strategic diversity are based on mature enterprises, which consider that the abundance and diversification of knowledge resources of mature enterprises affect the choice of strategic diversity of enterprises. However, compared with mature enterprises, new ventures have special entrepreneurial situations and are faced with the shortage of resources and knowledge reserves, which makes it difficult to diversify their strategies. In fact, when exploring entrepreneurship strategies or logical choices, we need to pay special attention to the cognitive factors of entrepreneurs. In the context of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs need to make decisions based on environmental awareness and personal judgment. As the leader of strategic decision-making, entrepreneurs largely determine the direction and strategic choice of entrepreneurship. The framework of "situational-thinking-behavioral" research of entrepreneurial cognitive further finds that entrepreneurial strategic decision-making is essentially a unique cognitive and thinking process induced by the particularity of entrepreneurial situation. Therefore, it can be predicted that entrepreneurial cognition plays an important role in the process of choosing strategic diversity.
Based on the knowledge-based view, it is believed that obtaining support from heterogeneous external resources can help enterprises accumulate needed knowledge to support the development of strategic diversity. Larraeta and others divide the external knowledge resources that entrepreneurs can acquire into two dimensions: diversity and novelty. They think that these two dimensions can greatly expand the vision of entrepreneurs, make entrepreneurs more exposed to new ideas and opportunities, and guide entrepreneurs to adopt diversified strategic choices. At the same time, under the background of the explosion of information and knowledge resources, knowledge will become an important source of strategic resources and competitive advantages of enterprises. Because of the tacit and non-liquidity of external knowledge, it will not spontaneously internalize into internal competitive advantages of enterprises. Its effectiveness depends on whether it can be correctly identified and absorbed. In addition, in the context of entrepreneurship, whether external knowledge resources are acquired or internalized and absorbed, entrepreneurs′ thinking and cognitive processes are indispensable, but most of the existing research is based on the exploration of enterprises and organizations. This paper synthetically draws lessons from entrepreneurial cognitive theory and knowledge-based theory, considers the overall relationship framework of entrepreneurial cognition, knowledge diversity and entrepreneurial strategy diversity, and explores the impact of entrepreneurial awareness on entrepreneurial strategy diversity from the perspective of entrepreneurs, and explores the intermediary mechanism and impact boundaries.
The research object is the entrepreneurs of new ventures. The research team collects data in various ways: first is to go directly to business incubator and business park, distribute and fill in questionnaires on the spot with the help of staff; second, through "acquaintance relationship", to contact entrepreneurs and ask them to fill in the electronic version of the questionnaire. In this study, about 300 questionnaires were distributed in paper and electronic versions, and 188 valid questionnaires were recovered, with an effective recovery rate of 62.67%. According to the preliminary statistics of the questionnaire data, male entrepreneurs accounted for 65.4% and female entrepreneurs accounted for 34.6%. Young and middle-aged entrepreneurs accounted for 53.7%. Education level distribution, undergraduate degree was 35.6%, graduate degree was 33.5%. In entrepreneurship experience, the vast majority of respondents participated in the establishment of one business (55.5%). 29.5% of the respondents participated in the establishment of two enterprises; in terms of enterprise size, the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises with less than 50 people (64.8%).
The empirical research results show that entrepreneurial cognition helps to improve the level of strategic diversity of new ventures, but the impact of different dimensions on knowledge diversity is different. Specifically, allocation cognitive and willingness cognitive have a significant role in promoting knowledge diversity, but competence cognitive has no significant impact on knowledge diversity. Diversity plays a mediating role, but it has no mediating effect on the relationship between competence cognition and strategic diversity. The higher the absorptive capacity, the stronger the role of knowledge diversity in promoting strategic diversity.
There are three main theoretical contributions in this paper: Firstly, based on social cognitive theory, this paper analyzed the problem of strategic diversity of new ventures with insufficient resources and knowledge reserves under the guidance of entrepreneurs′ cognition, and deepened the related research on strategic diversity of startups. Secondly, this paper finds and confirms that the positive effect of entrepreneurial awareness on strategic diversity of start-ups depends on the intermediary mechanism of knowledge diversity, which enriches and improves the application of knowledge-based view in the context of entrepreneurship. Thirdly, this paper finds that absorptive capacity promotes the relationship between knowledge diversity and strategic diversity. This paper holds that, one hand, absorptive capacity enables entrepreneurs to enhance their control over diversified knowledge, which can better support the implementation of corporate strategy; on the other hand, absorptive capacity can help new ventures avoid "lock-in effect" and enter "capability trap", thus expanding the level of corporate strategic diversity. The conclusion of this paper can be used to evaluate the strategic effect of absorptive capacity in entrepreneurship situation more comprehensively.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Market logic, community logic and choice of location in relocation of headquarters

Wu Bo, Yang Shaodong, Kang Jin

2021, 42(5): 79-86.

Abstract ( 311 )

The independence of headquarter (HQ) motivates the HQs relocation of many firms. So where do those firms relocate their HQs, only to the core cities? Previous studies focus on the HQs relocation to the few core cities, and argue that HQ agglomerating advantages pull the HQs into those core cities based on new economic geography theory, i.e. agglomeration-pulling theory. But still many firms relocate HQs to the peripheral cities, i.e. the multi-directional relocating phenomenon, which can′t be covered by the agglomeration-pulling theory. In order to fill this gap, we integrate the multiple institutional logic theory and new economic geography theory to revel the mechanics of HQ multi-directional relocation. Institution logics are different principals which define the values and appropriate practices, and those different institution logics have complementary-yet-conflicting relationships with each other. The agglomeration-pulling theory fellows market logic, which can be used to interpret the HQ relocation to the core cities; and non-market institutional logics, especially community logic, can be used to interpret the HQ relocation to the community which firms are identified.
Integrating new economic geography theory and multiple institutional logic theory, we argue three hypotheses to reveal the mechanics of HQ multi-directional relocation. Firstly, based on agglomeration-pulling theory, i.e. market logic, we argue the span of HQ agglomerating advantage has positive influence on HQ relocating location choice. That means those HQs are more inclined to move to the core cities pursuing better agglomerating advantages and HQ efficiency. Secondly, based on community logic, we argue the community commitment has positive influence on HQ relocating location choice. That means those HQs are more inclined to move to their belonging cities. And we divide community commitment into firm-regional political ties and controlling shareholder-regional distance, and argue that those cities are more attractive to firm HQs with more firm-regional political ties and shorter controlling shareholder-regional distance. Thirdly, with multiple institutional logic theory, we argue market logic and community logic have interactive effect on HQ relocating location choice, and the later will weakens the positive effect of the former on location choice. Both logics have their own and different definitions on the value and the appropriate practices, where market logic focuses on the economic value and market-based practices to achieve the economic goals, and community logic focuses on the community value and cooperative practices with the community agents to achieve the whole value of the community. So the existence of community logic will weaken the effect of market logic on HQ relocating location choice.
We use Chinese listed companies as the cases and get 126 HQ relocation cases to testify the hypotheses. The result of binary logistic regression analysis indicates the span of HQ agglomerating advantage and firm-regional political tie have positive influence on HQ relocating location choice; and controlling shareholder-regional distance has negative influence on HQ relocating location choice. And the span of HQ agglomerating advantage has negative interactive effect with firm-regional political tie on HQ relocating location choice, and positive interactive effect with controlling shareholder-regional distance. More interesting, the positive interactive effect of the latter is more robust than the former, which means controlling shareholders are more reliable to conduct the decisions on the relocation to the non-agglomerating advantage city following community logic. So, basically the three hypotheses are proved.
With the empirical study, three conclusions are drawn. Firstly, market logic and community logic both have significant effect on the location choice of HQ relocation, which provide new factors on the HQ relocation research. Secondly, the existence of community logic weakens the positive effect of market logic. This indicates that community logic and market logic have conflicting prescription on the directions of HQ relocation. So the community-pulling theory is proved. Thirdly, in contrast with firm-regional political tie, controlling shareholder-regional distance has more robust effect on the location choice of HQ relocation, which echoes the internal power view of multiple institutional logic theory.
Our study has two theoretic contributions. On the one hand, multiple institutional logic theory is introduced and community logic is used to analyze the location choice of HQ relocation, which provides new explanation on HQ multi-directional relocation phenomenon. On the other hand, the empirical study on the location choice decision by Chinese listed companies provides multiple institutional logic theory with more evidences from profit-making organizations. This study identifies the two logics and reveals the tension between the two, which reveals the important role of internal power distribution in the relocating decision following institutional logics.
Also, our study has important practical value. For HQ relocating decision, firms should consider and balance economic rationality and community legitimacy. For regional governments, two paths can be used to promote the city attractiveness to HQs. The one is to follow market logic and construct HQ agglomerating advantages, which usually is applied by core first-line cities. And the other is to follow community logic and form the community-oriented city environments to keep and attract HQs, which usually is applied by second-line cities.
Our study has several limitations, which reveal the future research directions. Firstly, our data are from Chinese listed company, which limits the outside validation. Therefore, in the future, other organizations can be used to testify our model. Secondly, our study focuses on market logic and community logic, so future studies can identify other institutional logics to interpret the HQ multi-directional relocation. Thirdly, our study focuses on the tension between the two logics, and future studies can reveal the complimentary of different institutional logics. Fourthly, our study focuses on the location choice, and future studies can reveal the result of HQ relocation, such as the influence on the organizational legitimacy and economic performance.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

The relationship between customer participation in value co-creation and brand image building

Yang Nan

2021, 42(5): 87-93.

Abstract ( 514 )

With the popularity of social media, enterprises pay more attention to the construction of virtual brand community, so as to show customers the unique value of products so as to form a good word-of-mouth communication effect. By using the research method of grounded theory, this paper collects community review information as empirical data, encodes the data step by step, constructs concepts from the data, discovers and establishes various relationships between concepts, and distinguishes the main categories. Based on the comparison of concepts and categories, this paper makes an in-depth analysis of the spindle coding, supplements the original data, saturates the theory, and refines the categories of interactive experience, community belonging and brand positioning. Then it analyzes the value co-creation activities from two dimensions of product value and brand value, and finds that product value co-creation includes core elements such as product value cognition and user demand, while brand value co-creation includes core elements such as brand value and sense of community belonging. On this basis, this paper explains the relationship between customer participation in value co-creation and brand image building, provides a theoretical basis for the development of enterprises′ value co-creation activities, constructs a model from the aspects of word-of-mouth effect and interactive experience, investigates the correlation between customer participation in community activities and brand value co-creation, and reveals the main ways for enterprises to realize value co-creation.
Through the analysis of the original data, it is found that community interactive experience includes emotional experience, related experience and sensory experience. Good emotional experience can increase users′ affinity for the brand and strengthen brand identification; related experience can make users connect with other members of the community and form brand preference; while sensory experience can strengthen users′ purchase motivation and form good brand identity good brand attitude and brand culture. Research shows that, as an online interactive experience platform, virtual brand community can carry out all-round interactive activities around the needs of users, and build an open space for resource sharing and win-win cooperation. By guiding and encouraging users to participate in community activities, it can not only provide users with good service experience, create user reputation, but also obtain users′ lifelong value, and achieve the goal of value co-creation from two dimensions of product value and brand value. In the process of participating in community activities, users can not only get material rewards, but also get a sense of participation, belonging and achievement in the virtual community with common interests and interests as the link. Research shows that product value co-creation includes core elements such as value cognition and user demand, and is conducive to the formation of a good brand culture. Through the coding analysis of community reviews, it is found that the shaping of brand image depends on product innovation and the construction of an ecosystem based on user value interaction.
The study also shows that there is a correlation between customer participation in community activities and co-creation of brand value. Customers will have a sense of belonging to the community through information sharing and online interaction in the community environment, which helps enterprises to obtain higher brand value. Therefore, enterprises should build a virtual brand community around product innovation, obtain demand information and creative sources of product innovation through platform interaction, strengthen customer interaction experience, and establish a perfect information communication mechanism. Enterprises should pay attention to the role of public opinion leaders, give full play to their enthusiasm and influence. It is found that enterprises should focus on customer′s "interactive experience" and focus on product creativity and emotional experience. The choice of interactive topics should be close to customers′ deep needs, focus on emotional resonance with customers, and stimulate customers′ willingness to participate in value creation. Enterprises can use high-quality original content resources to increase user stickiness, create a good environment for product value co-creation, and create a distinct brand image. Enterprises should also set up a community maintenance group to improve user registration and activity, and strengthen the sense of social identity and belonging of community members.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Goodwill and stock price crash risk: A research based on the signaling theory perspective

Zhang Danni, Zhou Zejiang

2021, 42(5): 94-101.

Abstract ( 420 )

With increasing value of goodwill in mergers and acquisition activities, the problem of goodwill bubble has attracted more and more attention. Previous studies have suggested that higher goodwill value usually indicates more benefit from future synergetic effect, so goodwill can be used as an important factor to predict the future excess profitability of enterprises. However, can goodwill always be used as a positive signal to bring profits for enterprises?
To answer this question, this paper attempts to research the effect of goodwill on stock price crash risk. Stock price crash usually refers to the phenomenon that stock price suddenly falls sharply without warning, which is believed to have originated from the hoarding of bad news by managers out of their own interests under the condition of information asymmetry. A large number of studies discussed stock price crash risk from the perspective of enterprise information quality, and confirmed that in the context of information asymmetry, high quality enterprise information is particularly important for reducing stock price crash risk.
Considering the high uncertainty and controllability in the process of recognition, measurement and subsequent impairment of goodwill, this paper proves that goodwill may increase the uncertainty of the future operation of enterprises and degrade the quality of financial information, and finally have a significant positive effect on stock price crash risk. The specific reasons are as follows, first, the recognition of goodwill is highly subjective, and the high probability of failure in mergers and acquisition activities makes it difficult for goodwill to create synergetic value, thus increasing the uncertainty of future business. At the same time, the immeasurable value of goodwill and the high operability in the subsequent impairment activity weaken the quality of enterprise financial information. Although a large number of previous studies have discussed the defects of goodwill, most of them only focus on theoretical analysis, and the test for the impact of huge goodwill on enterprise risk was even rarer.
Besides, this paper carries out grouping test according to whether the enterprise has provision of goodwill impairment, and argues that when firms have provision of goodwill impairment, the impact of goodwill on the risk of corporate stock price crash will be relatively weakened. The main reason is that the provision for impairment of goodwill effectively corrects the inflated value of goodwill, and makes the amount of goodwill much closer to its real value. At the same time, the value of goodwill is conducive to the valuation of the enterprise by investors, which releases the risk caused by the uncertainty of future operation and the distortion of financial information. We further propose that, for enterprises in regions with high marketization level, the fierce competition environment and free market atmosphere reduce the credibility of the amount of goodwill and improve the controllability of its value, thus intensifying the positive influence of goodwill on the risk of stock price crash.
We use the sample of A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2016 to discuss the influence of corporate goodwill on stock price crash risk from the perspective of signal theory. Using multiple regression analysis, we find out that goodwill and stock price crash risk are positively correlated, which means that the higher the value of goodwill, the higher the risk of stock price crash. Besides, for enterprises that have provision of goodwill value impairment, the positive effect of goodwill on stock price crash risk will no longer significant; We further find out that, for enterprises in regions with favorable marketization level, the positive influence of goodwill on stock price crash risk will be stronger.
In order to test the reliability of the above regression results, this paper also conducts the following robustness test. First, as this paper only tests the enterprises with goodwill, this however mean that our samples may have a potential problem of selection bias. To address this problem, we adopted Heckman′s two-stage regression model to alleviate the endogenous problems that may exist in this paper. Besides, since Fan Gang′s marketization index is only updated to 2014, the data of 2015-2016 were predicted by time-series regression based on the data from 2008 to 2014. In order to further test the regulatory role of market index, this paper shortened the sample period and repeated the above test with the data from 2008 to 2014. The robustness results supported all the conclusions above.
The contribution of this paper is mainly reflected in the following aspects: First, previous discussion on goodwill value risk is mainly based on theoretical analysis, while this paper empirically examines the influence of goodwill value on stock price crash risk, providing effective empirical evidence for previous theoretical studies. Second, this paper helps us to better understand the formation mechanism of stock price crash risk, and further confirmed the importance of improving the quality of accounting information. Third, this paper deepens the understanding of the importance of goodwill impairment provision and the impact mechanism of stock price crash risk by carrying out grouping test according to whether the enterprise has provision of goodwill impairment. Fourth, the test of market index helps to clarify the difference in the influence of goodwill on the risk of stock price crash under different marketization levels.
This article also provides the following policy implications: First, given goodwill value can play a role of warning in predicting stock price crash risk, firms and regulators may need to be alerted to high goodwill value in mergers and acquisitions activities, and make reasonable estimates of goodwill to reduce the risk of goodwill, which may also be beneficial to enterprises and their stock holders. Second, in the process of goodwill impairment, managers have great chance for value manipulation, which will further increase the risk of goodwill. Therefore, the management needs to pay more attention to the normative of goodwill impairment activity, so as to better restore the true value of goodwill, and finally reduce the risk of the collapse of the stock price caused by goodwill. Third, with the rapid development of China′s economy, regions with high marketization level need to strengthen the management of financial information quality and improve risk prevention awareness while developing economy.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

The impact of manufacturing agglomeration on energy performance and its regional comparison

Yang Haochang, Li Lianshui, Zhang Faming

2021, 42(5): 102-115.

Abstract ( 180 )

In the process of China′s rapid growth into the world′s second largest economy, the contribution of manufacturing industry is particularly prominent. "Made in China" is famous all over the world, and a large number of products are exported overseas, which has created one miracle after another for China′s economy, as a result, China has gradually become the largest manufacturing country in the world. Looking back on the development of Chinese manufacturing industry, "resource dividend" was one of the main driving forces for Chinese manufacturing industry to create a miracle of economic growth. However, with the substantial increase of energy factor prices, the increasing pressure of energy conservation and emission reduction and the rapid deterioration of environmental quality problems, the traditional "resource dividend" is gradually disappearing, Chinese manufacturing industry paid for expensive resources and environment, and the extensive economic growth mode characterized by "high energy consumption, high emission, high pollution and low efficiency" is difficult to sustain. Therefore, Chinese manufacturing industry must take the "green manufacturing" road of energy conservation, emission reduction and sustainable development, and it is unsustainable to rely too much on the input of human resources, capital, energy and other factors, the development mode of Chinese manufacturing industry must change from factor expansion to efficiency enhancement. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee clearly puts forward the five development concepts of "innovation, coordination, green, opening and sharing", adhering to the basic national policy of resource conservation and environmental protection, and adhering to sustainable development. The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also clearly proposes to establish and improve the green economic system, low-carbon and circular development, promote the revolution of energy production and consumption, and advocate green development. Therefore, under the dual pressure of energy and environmental constraints, in order to achieve the sustainable and green development of Chinese manufacturing industry, so as to achieve the win-win of economic growth, energy conservation and environmental protection, and then promote the sound and rapid development of China′s economy, improving the energy performance of manufacturing industry has become the key problem to be solved.
As the largest manufacturing country in the world, the miracle of economic growth created by Chinese manufacturing industry is also a process of deepening industrial agglomeration. Since the reform and opening up, China′s industrialization process has been advancing with the improvement of the geographical spatial agglomeration level of its economic activities. Therefore, industrial agglomeration has become one of the most significant characteristics of China′s manufacturing economic activities. Theoretically speaking, on the one hand, manufacturing agglomeration can significantly improve energy performance through increasing returns to scale, knowledge or technology spillover, transaction cost reduction and incentive mechanism of energy conservation and emission reduction formed by imperfect competition; On the other hand, it will also lead to the monopoly of resources through the negative externalities, which will lead to the distortion of resource allocation and inefficient use of energy, and then inhibit the improvement of energy performance. Therefore, in-depth study on the impact of manufacturing agglomeration on energy performance and explore feasible ways to improve the energy performance of manufacturing industry will not only help to clarify the mechanism of manufacturing agglomeration on energy performance, but also effectively analyze the influencing factors that restrict the improvement of energy performance, so as to promote Chinese manufacturing industry from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage and from an extensive development stage mode to intensive development mode. Moreover, it has very important theoretical research significance and practical guiding value to realize the sustainable growth of China′s economy, the intensive and efficient use of energy, the improvement of environmental quality problems, thus speeding up the construction of "two oriented society", the practice of "ecological civilization" and the promotion of "green manufacturing".
Based on the provincial manufacturing panel data in China from 2003 to 2015, this paper makes an empirical analysis of the impact of manufacturing agglomeration on static and dynamic energy performance and its regional differences by using the two-stage least square method. The results show that: (1) As a whole, no matter without environmental constraints or under environmental constraints, there is an obvious "U" curve relationship between manufacturing agglomeration and static and dynamic energy performance as well as its decomposition index; (2) There is also a significant "U" relationship between manufacturing economic development level and static and dynamic energy performance, namely that the "environmental Kuznets hypothesis" is significant existence in Chinese manufacturing industry. Secondly, manufacturing enterprises scale and environmental regulation are both beneficial to the improvement of static and dynamic energy performances, Schumpeter′s hypotheses and Porter hypothesis are verified. In addition, foreign direct investment and property right structure of manufacturing industry have a negative impact on static and dynamic energy performance, pollution haven hypothesis is supported; (3) Under two circumstances of without environmental constraints and environmental constraints, there are both obvious regional differences in the impact of manufacturing agglomeration on static and dynamic energy performance. Among them, the manufacturing agglomeration in the eastern and central regions promotes the dynamic energy performance mainly through the combined action of energy technical efficiency improvement and energy technological progress, while the manufacturing agglomeration in the western region promotes the dynamic energy performance only through the energy technical efficiency improvement. Based on the above conclusions, this paper draws some policy implications to promote the manufacturing industry to improve quality and efficiency, save energy and reduce emissions, and realize the high-quality, intensive and sustainable development of Chinese manufacturing industry.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

The relationship between over-relational-embeddness and technological innovation of SMEs

Wang Shilei, Wang Fei, Peng Xinmin

2021, 42(5): 116-123.

Abstract ( 189 )

SMEs face significant resource constraints during attempts to innovate. Network provide partners with superior information about each other, engender knowledge-based trust and, as a result, enforce tie stability and often become overly relational embedded. Exhibit greater resource similarity and marketing commonality have greater propensity to engage in interfirm rivalry. Lacking distinctive competitive advantage, the majority of SMEs therefore never create any discernible technologically innovative outcomes due to overly relational embeddness. However, evidence suggests that SMEs - despite typically being small and resource constrained - are sometimes able to innovate effectively.
One promising theory that explicitly links to ways SMEs respond to resource constraints is bricolage. The definition of bricolage is "making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities", provides an important pathway to achieve technological innovation for resource-constrained firms. Through a bias for action and a refusal to enact limitations on the resources that are available to create solutions, SMEs would tackle unexpected complex challenge, take advantage of opportunities, and go where most other firms won′t, in their attempts at technical innovation.
Authors have generated list of firm attributes that may help firms to conceive of and implement innovation strategies. For purpose of this discussion, these numerous possible firm resources can be conveniently classified into two categories: physical resources and intellectual resources. Physical resources contain physical technology used in a firm, such as plants and facilities, its geographic location, and its access to raw materials. While intellectual resources have experience, intelligence, wisdom. Through physical resource bricolage and intellectual resource bricolage, firms under resource constraints are engage in the process of recombination that are core to creating innovative outcomes. In this paper, we draw on recent studies of bricolage to develop and test theory that suggests that by engaging in physical and intellectual resource bricolage, SMEs overly relational embedded may thereby improve their innovativeness. However, the mechanism needs to be deeply revealed.
Data was collected from 269 SEMs, the empirical results show that over relational embeddness contributes to incremental technological innovation positively through physical bricolage, and shared vision significantly moderated the mediation effect. No general support for our competing hypothesis that the negative effects of bricolage on disruptive innovation was found. The result indicates that SMEs that overly relational embedded achieve technological innovation through physical bricolage and construction of shared vision.
The study has certain contribution in enriching the relevant theories of technological innovation, as well as offering evidence in helping SMEs achieve technological innovation. Contrary to common sense, over relational embeddness provides more opportunities for physical bricolage, making full use of the idle and single use physical resources to overcome the small and weakness of technological innovation of SMEs. In addition, the joint effect of shared vision and over relational embeddness greatly improves the quality of bricolage and enrich the resource, which helps to provide theoretical references for bricolage governance.
This paper also has the following implications for management practices: Firstly, SMEs shall not prevent accepting the reality of asymmetric dependence, and establish the key ties with government, commercial banks, and scientific research institutes. What is more, the SMEs should fully exploit the idle sites, ineffectively used production equipment, unexplored technologies, and innovation potential, which challenged the SMEs. Secondly, shared vison provides bricolage orientation and meaning for SMEs and partners who are overly connected, care should be taken to ensure that shared vision is realistic and achievable to focus their energies and engage in technological innovation.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on acting paths of cooperative innovation risk on innovation performance of firms

Wu Weihong, Zhao Kun, Zhang Aimei

2021, 42(5): 124-132.

Abstract ( 237 )

With the continuous development of economic globalization, our country′s economy has become more and more deeply integrated into the world economic system. It is urgent for enterprises to seek more technological innovations resources and built core competitiveness to meet the fierce competition in the international market. In this context, the important role of collaborative innovation in the survival and sustainable development of enterprises has become more and more prominent. However, because of the complexity, multi-agent and dynamic characteristics of the collaborative innovation, there might be various risk factors arise in the process of collaborative innovation, which is going to directly or indirectly affect the effect of collaborative innovation and eventually in turn affects enterprises innovation performance and the exerting of competitive advantage.
On the basis of existing research, from the perspective of the entire chain of enterprise collaborative innovation, we build a three-stage, double-faced risk research framework of "input-process-output" which is based on the two levels of innovation resources and cooperative entities. Then, we identify the 6 types of enterprise collaborative innovation risks through the above risk research framework, which including the innovation factor input risk and moral hazard that are caused by the insufficient investment or information asymmetry between the partners at the initial stage of cooperation, resource sharing risks and organizational synergy risks arising from insufficient innovation resource sharing and unsmooth communication and collaboration among innovative entities at the process stage , and the market risk and benefit distribution risk caused by the mismatch between the product and the market in the final output stage and the interest disputes between subjects. At the same time, we further introduce synergy effect as an intermediary variable and dynamic capabilities as a moderating variable to deeply study the relationship between enterprise collaborative innovation risk and innovation performance. Through a questionnaire survey, we take 226 high-tech listed companies as the research object, and use SEM model and hierarchical regression analysis to conduct empirical research.
The results of the study are as follows: (1) The six types of collaborative innovation risks all have a significant negative impact on innovation performance, and different risks have different degrees of impact on innovation performance. Organizational collaborative risk has shown the most obvious negative effect, followed by benefit distribution risks, and moral hazard is the smallest. (2) Synergy effect has a significant intermediary effect between innovation factor input risk, moral hazard, resource sharing risk, organizational synergy risk, benefit distribution risk and innovation performance, but there is no obviously intermediary effect between market risk and innovation performance; (3) Dynamic capabilities significantly regulate the relationship between innovation factor input risk, moral hazard, resource sharing risk, organizational synergy risk, market risk and innovation performance, but there is no regulatory effect on the relationship between benefit distribution risk and innovation performance.
In response to the above-mentioned research results, from the aspects of enhancing the awareness of risk prevention and control and promoting dynamic capability formation, we put forward suggestions to provide theoretical support and practical experience for the collaborative innovation management of enterprises.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on the patent-based technology collaboration between China and Sweden

Zhang Yafeng, Li Chenglong, Xiao Li

2021, 42(5): 133-142.

Abstract ( 224 )

International technology collaboration is an important way in improving domestic technological innovation. A lot of countries, multinational corporations, research institutes and universities are taking measures to enhance their international technology collaboration level, which is helpful in promoting open innovation, improving research efficiency and reducing research risks. By defining the dominant industries in Sweden and the IPC classifications of the patents in those industries, this article uses the data of the collaborated PCT and EPO patents between China and Sweden during 1988 - 2017 to analyze the collaboration situation of technology between the two nations.
First, we divide international patent collaboration into 9 specific types based on the collaboration of patent applicants and patent inventors. Because patent applicants are usually the patent holders after the patent being granted, and patent holders have the right to enforce their patents, while inventors only have the right to get some rewards and the right to have their names signed in the patent document, we hold the opinion that collaboration between patent applicants is more meaningful. Starting from this point, we further define the 9 types of international patent collaboration into broad (between applicant and/or inventor) international patent collaboration and narrow (between applicants) international patent collaboration, where the narrow collaboration is the more meaningful one as defined.
Second, we analyzed the situation of the patent collaboration between China and Sweden in the four dominant industries of Sweden. The four industries include Information and Communication Industry, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry, Medical Device Industry, and Automobile Manufacturing Industry. And we analyze the patent collaboration between China and Sweden in the four industries using dimensions of PCT and EPO patent.
Third, we clarified the characteristics of the patent collaboration between China and Sweden from three aspects of technology fields, entity features and regional difference. In this section, we compare the patent collaboration between China and Sweden and the patent collaboration between America and Sweden to enrich our findings. It is found that, in aspect of technology fields, the more developed the technology of a nation is, the more likely the technology is found to have collaborations in patents; besides, the nature of the technologies themselves and other factors also influence the collaboration, and the technology development level is not the only factor. In aspect of entity features, the background of the applicants and inventors has impact on the collaboration, especially the investment background of the organizations applying patents and the relationship background of the organization leaders and inventors. In aspect of regional difference, patent collaboration is found to have regional propensity, this is mainly because patent is protected by national/regional law and the decision of collaboration behavior is made based on market consideration of certain nations or regions. 
The research is aimed at providing reference for further technology collaboration of China and other countries. It is of great significance to discuss the collaboration with small nations in deepening China′s international technology collaboration strategy and promoting enterprises′ technological innovation under the background of the tense Sino-America relationship. Based on the findings, we put forward some policy implications for the future technology collaboration.
〖WTHZ〗Key words

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Does social trust help enterprises fulfill their social responsibilities?

Yang Zhen, Ling Hongcheng, Chen Jin

2021, 42(5): 143-152.

Abstract ( 313 )

The evolution process of corporate social responsibility has been nearly 100 years. It has gradually evolved from the necessity and legitimacy of social responsibility behavior whether or not to perform social responsibility to the rationality and social desirability of how to perform social responsibility better and sustainably, the concept of corporate social responsibility has also changed from the concept of moral charity based on businessmen, the concept of social response based on the pressure of stakeholders to the concept of tool competition based on strategic competition and the concept of social responsibility based on platform value co creation and sharing. In this sense, how to better drive enterprises to fulfill social responsibility and more sustainable performance of social responsibility has become a major practical topic of concern and research in academia and industry. From the existing research, although there are multiple perspectives to drive corporate social responsibility, including "from the outside to the inside" external institutional drive and external stakeholders drive, as well as "from the inside out" internal entrepreneurship and managers′ social responsibility cognition to drive corporate social responsibility.
However, from the perspective of institution theory, studies have neglected that informal institutional environment, as a "lubricant" in macroeconomic operation and micro enterprise market and social activities, plays an irreplaceable role in regulating enterprise market and social behavior. Although the existing research has focused on the important role of social trust in the market-oriented economic behaviors, such as financing constraints, risk-taking, M&A performance and enterprise innovation, there is a lack of attention on the corporate social responsibility behavior in the sense of corporate social attributes.
Based on A-share listed companies in China from 2009 to 2017, this paper empirically examines the impact of social trust on corporate social responsibility, and examines the regulatory effects of external formal system and internal executive incentive institution on social trust (informal system) and corporate social responsibility, and further verifies the corporate social responsibility under the guidance of tool competition logic in society the instrumental value effect between trust and enterprise innovation.
The results show that: (1) social trust has a significant positive impact on corporate social responsibility. Heterogeneity analysis shows that there are heterogeneity in property rights, disclosure environment and industry follow-up; (2) The external formal system (market-oriented environment) has a positive regulatory role between social trust and corporate social responsibility, showing a synergistic multiplier effect of formal system and informal system on corporate social responsibility; (3) The equity incentive system of executives in enterprises has a negative regulatory role between social trust and corporate social responsibility, showing the substitution effect of incentive system in enterprises and informal system outside enterprises on corporate social responsibility; (4) corporate social responsibility has a partial intermediary role between social trust and corporate innovation, that is, corporate social responsibility proposed by Porter and Kramer (2006). The effect of strategic competition tools is supported by empirical results.
This paper finds that the informal institutional environment plays an important role in driving corporate social responsibility, and confirms that the formal institutional environment and the internal incentive institutional environment play an important moderating role between the informal institutional environment and corporate social responsibility, and reveals that social trust is not only a "lubricant" of enterprise market behavior, but also a kind of "lubricant" to standard, incentive and governance corporate social responsibility, which is conducive to the formation of value reciprocal network relationship between enterprises and external stakeholders, and then drives the "moral orientation" and "social self-discipline" of enterprises.
Therefore, this paper enriches the research on the driving factors of corporate social responsibility at the theoretical level, especially bridging the shortcomings of the traditional "from outside to inside" external system driven and external stakeholders driven, as well as the "inside out" internal entrepreneurship and managers′ social responsibility awareness drive, and finally verifies the corporate social responsibility as a strategy competition tools can help enterprises obtain innovation resources and promote their innovation performance.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Identification of breakthrough inventions based on patent-to-patent similarity: A case study of nanotechnology

Ma Rongkang, Wang Yitang

2021, 42(5): 153-160.

Abstract ( 430 )

With the rapid increase in the number of patent applications in China, how to measure and identify breakthrough inventions with high technology and economic value has become a hot issue. Since 2011, the number of invention patent applications in China has ranked first in the world for eight consecutive years. However, how to identify breakthrough inventions through ex ante and ex post indicators remains a problem in academia. Thus, it is of significance to identify the invention patents with major breakthroughs and turn them into productivity in China.
Considering the general lack of citation information in Chinese patents, this paper draws on the definitions and identification criteria of breakthrough inventions by Dahlin and Behrens (2005) to construct the patent-to-patent similarity index with the IPC information of patents. Considering both the ex ante and ex post indicators of patents, we introduces the time dimension to measure the novelty, uniqueness, and impact of patents by comparing the similarity of patents in the past, current and future periods, so proposing a comprehensive identification solution for breakthrough inventions. In order to test the validity of our identification solution, we choose the field of nanotechnology as an example. As one of the fastest growing and widely influential emerging science and technology fields in the world, nanotechnology is a typical interdisciplinary technology field. The cross-domain attributes of nanotechnology determine the wide range of IPC classifications involved, which is suitable for our research using patent IPC classification and is more useful to reveal the invention characteristics of technologies in the emerging interdisciplinary domains. Then, we conduct an empirical test by using the granted invention patents in nanotechnology from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 1989-2010.
Our conclusions are as follows. First, we find that it is feasible and operational to use IPC classification similarity to identify breakthrough inventions. Specifically, we can identify 6.23% and 5.06% of nanotechnology patents as breakthrough inventions with the similarity indicators based on IPC four- and six-digit classifications. Second, by comparing with the breakthrough inventions identified based on patent citation, this paper verifies the validation and difference of the breakthrough inventions identified based on patent IPC classification similarity. This paper finds that there is a significant positive correlation between breakthrough inventions identified based on patent similarity and based on patent forward citations. At the same time, however, this paper finds that only 0.5% of the results obtained by the two types of identification methods are the same, indicating that it may be biased by purely relying on patented citation data to identify breakthrough inventions in the past, so the identification solution based on IPC classification similarity is a useful supplement. Finally, through the comparative study of the source characteristics at the invention-, inventor- and organizational-level, this paper further validates the effectiveness and difference of the breakthrough inventions identified based on patent IPC classification similarity. The breakthrough inventions based on patent similarity and patent citation shows basically consistent results in inventor and organizational characteristics, indicating the validation of the new identification solution based on patent IPC similarity in the inventor- and organizational-level. At the same time, however, this paper also finds that the two types of identification methods show inconsistent results in the characteristics of the invention′s knowledge source, indicating that the previous research results on the source characteristics of the invention may be affected by the breakthrough invention identification method. Thus, we suggest that future research on the source of breakthrough inventions needs to pay attention to different identification methods.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on the effect of intellectual property and agricultural openness on new plant variety innovation

Zhang Chao, Zhou Yanping

2021, 42(5): 161-169.

Abstract ( 150 )

In 1999, China joined the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) and began accepting applications for new plant varieties rights at home and abroad, and implementing property rights protection for new plant varieties. In the past 20 years, China has applied for 26,000 pieces and authorized 12,000 pieces agricultural new plant varieties. However, China still faces the problem of significant regional imbalances and low comprehensive benefits, and the existing protection intensity of intellectual property rights is not optimal, and most provinces and regions have lower intellectual property protection, which hinders the coordination and development of regional innovation. In the new era, we must start a new pattern of comprehensive opening up and implement a strategy of quality agriculture and rural revitalization. The international protection of new plant varieties has become increasingly strict, and the call for the upgrading of domestic variety protection treaties and the expansion of protection systems is growing. Under the new situation of continuously expanding openness, how to balance the rational relationship between intellectual property protection, agricultural openness and regional plant variety innovation is a real problem that needs to be answered urgently.
Based on the combing of domestic and foreign literatures, this paper holds that intellectual property protection, opening up to the outside world and investment in innovative factors have an important impact on the innovation of regional plant varieties. Therefore, using the data of China′s main grain producing areas from 2000 to 2015, this paper examines the effect of intellectual property protection and agricultural openness on plant variety innovation by constructing indicators such as innovation of new plant varieties, openness of agriculture and level of intellectual property protection. The results show that, in the whole regions, intellectual property protection and agricultural openness have significant promoting effects on the promotion of variety innovation, while the interaction between them has inhibitory effects. Then, the China′s main grain producing areas are divided into three major regions: Northeast China, East China and Central China. It is found that intellectual property protection, agricultural openness and the interaction between the two have obvious heterogeneity characteristics for the innovation of different regional varieties. The interaction coefficient is positive, which indicates that with the expansion of agricultural openness, the marginal effect of intellectual property protection on variety innovation will gradually change from the initial obstacle to the promotion. Similarly, if the level of intellectual property protection continues to increase, the marginal effect of agricultural openness on breed innovation will gradually shift from hindrance to promotion. In addition, the number of scientific researchers, R&D expenditures, and fixed assets is also an important factor affecting regional varieties innovation. Finally, aiming at endogenous problems, the robustness test is carried out by replacing intellectual property protection variables with instrumental variable method to verify the robustness of the conclusions above.
This paper holds that the provinces in the China′s major grain producing areas should combine their own characteristics and implement local policies in order to give full play to the positive effects of intellectual property protection and agricultural openness on plant varieties innovation in the region. Based on this, the article gives some suggestions to improve the innovation ability of regional varieties from the perspective of intellectual property protection and agricultural openness. The government should strengthen the basic legal system for the protection of new varieties of plants, improve the judicial and administrative protection mechanisms, carry out international exchanges and cooperation on intellectual property protection, and promote the protection of new varieties of plants from continuous strengthening to comprehensive and strict transformation.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A research on the innovation incentive effect of government subsidies and market financing in the new energy vehicle industry

Chi Renyong, Ruan Hongpeng, Yu Jun

2021, 42(5): 170-181.

Abstract ( 276 )

To cultivate and develop the new energy vehicle industry is an effective solution to reduce the pressure on fossil energy and environment. But its technological bottleneck is a main problem in the industrial development. To promote R&D and Innovation is an important way to obtain industrial technological progress by governmental subsidies to compensate firm R&D and innovation input for high uncertainty and spillover effects. Currently, there are three main theoretic problems to be discussed, i.e., how do governmental subsidies and market financing stimulate firm innovation in China new energy vehicle industry? Whether governmental subsidies encourage firms to increase innovation input with their own financing funds？In the context of the reduction in government subsidies，how to balance the monetary policy and fiscal policy for the new energy vehicle industry in the future?
Existing studies mainly focus on the vertical comparison to stimulate innovation between government subsidies and market financing. Some literatures focused on the impact of government subsidies on firm innovation，emphasizing its stimulative effect and crowding out effect on firm innovation. Others focused on the relationship between financing constraints and firm innovation to analyze their promoting effect and exclusion effect of firm innovation in terms of firm financial growing. However, very few studies have integrated governmental subsidy and market financing into the same research framework to explore the different impacts of the two aspects on innovation input of new energy vehicle industry and their coordinative effects between the two variables on firm innovation. Therefore, it is difficult to answer whether the government subsidy policy can stimulate firms to increase private innovation input, and how the government should design fiscal policy and monetary policy for the new energy vehicle industry so far.
In this study, we collected the data in the annual reports of 110 new energy vehicle firms listed during 2015 to 2018 in China stock market from the CSMAR database and the WIND database, to classify the data of fiscal subsidies and tax incentives, equity and credit financing by careful reading their annual reports. In terms of the panel data, we have done comparative studies between governmental subsidies incentives, such as fiscal subsidies and tax incentives to the firm innovation, between equity financing and credit financing to firm innovation effects. And，this paper explores the collaborative effect on firm innovation by the interaction between government subsidies and market financing, comparative studies by upper, middle and downstream firms in terms of industrial chains, and state owned and non-state-owned firms in terms of firm ownership.
The empirical study shows that government subsidies and market financing have different incentive effects on firm innovation. Specifically, both fiscal subsidies and tax incentives can significantly stimulate firms to increase R&D investment, and the role of fiscal subsidies is greater than that of tax incentives, while credit financing and equity financing do not promote firm R&D investment significantly. On the one hand, firms do not use their market financing funds into the R&D activity. On the other hand, the study also shows that government fiscal subsidies do not drive firms to input private R&D, instead of, making more dependence on government.
Moreover, the coordination between government subsidies and market financing can effectively promote firm innovation of new energy vehicle industry. The study indicates that when firms have more market financing, they are more willing to use government funds for innovation. On the contrary, when it is difficult for firms to obtain external market financing, they will use government subsidies for other purposes.
Furthermore, this study finds that firms in the industrial upstream are more dependent on government subsidies and seldom use the funds obtained from the market financing for R&D purpose, and there is no driving effect of governmental policy. The middle and downstream firms can use the government subsidies funds for R&D purpose, and input market financing for R&D use either. In this case, governmental policy can generate driving effect in good results. Therefore, in the downstream of the industry, combination between government subsidy and market financing can generate greater incentive effects on firm innovation than that of middle and upstream firms.
Finally, the empirical study also reveals that there are differences of governmental policy incentive effects to innovation between state owned firms and non-state-owned firms. The policy has greater positive impacts on non-state-owned firm than that of state-owned firm significantly. In other words, it means that non-state-owned firms are more likely to use market raising money into R&D and innovation，and government subsidy policies plays more significant positive effect to promote equity and credit financing of non-state-owned firms than that of state counterpart, because these firms got from government subsidy can transmit positive information to the market.
The conclusions of this paper have the following policy implications: (1) In the context of reduced government subsidies year by year, the government should gradually shift from fiscal subsidy policy to monetary policy based on market mechanism. For instance, policies such as interest rate subsidy and loan guaranty are more effective tools to reduce firm financing cost, so as to encourage firm innovation input. (2) government policies for the new energy vehicle industry need to be reformed and more focused in terms of different industrial chain stages and in different ownership precisely. For these firms in the middle, upstream of the industry and non-state-owned firms, government should focus policy on fiscal subsidies and loan supporting, helping them overcome financing constraints. For these firms in downstream of the industry, government should cut down fiscal subsidies, and increase loan support, to encourage firms to carry out innovation in market orientation. (3) Governmental policy should be more precise and flexible depending on the industrial chain and firm ownership, combination of fiscal subsidy and monetary policies based on market orientation would be more effective to firm innovation, and the subsidies should be more focusing on non-state-owned firms because they are more efficiency to use their subsidy.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

A study of the difference of researchers′ academic performance during their professional career

Zhang Lihua, Ji Lu, Chen Xin

2021, 42(5): 182-190.

Abstract ( 240 )

The creativity of researchers varies significantly at different stages of their careers. A study by Nature shows that there is a peak in the career of researchers, and most scientists experience only one peak . The common view is that researchers′ creativity follows an "inverted U-shaped" curve, that is, at the beginning of their careers, the creativity of researchers is at a low level, then gradually increases to reach the peak, and then gradually declines after the peak. Academic performance is an important manifestation of creativity. The analysis of the differences of academic performance in different stages of scientific researchers′ career is helpful for the research managers to better understand the law and trajectory of talent growth and provide a basis for the evaluation and management policies of scientific and technological talents.
In this paper, publication and citation data of Web of Science database is used as data source, and 736 researchers whose career in virology had been over 30 years were selected as the research objects. The career of researcher is divided into 6 stages with a time window of 5 years. Firstly, the changing laws of researchers′ productivity, academic influence and cooperation ability at various stages are discussed. Selecting a few indicators such as No. of papers, Times cited, i10-index, COPP, COPS, using descriptive statistical analysis method, the 9 index values of 736 scholars in 6 career stages were calculated respectively, and ploting the change curve of each index in different stages. Through the analysis of the shape of the curve to reflect the scientific research personnel in the 30 years of academic performance in his career change. Secondly, whether the differences in the academic performance of researchers existing between different stages is explored. For each indicator, the index values of 736 authors at each stage were taken as a set of data, 6 sets of data were obtained in total, and 15 sets of data were obtained in pairs. Any two groups are tested using the one-way analysis of variance to explore whether there were differences in academic performance of researchers at different stages. If the variance is homogeneous, the difference between the two groups is significant according to the ANOVA table, and else, Aspin-Welch test is used to judge whether the difference is significant.
The results show that in the first five years of career, researchers′ productivity and academic influence are at a low level, but at this time, the participation of researchers is high, and they are the main contributors and implementers of research work. During the 6-20 years of their career, researchers gradually transition from the main force of scientific research to the leadership role of the research team, and the overall academic influence shows a stable and small rise. During the 21-30 years of their career, productivity is still growing, but at a slower rate, researchers are still playing leading roles, and academic influence is at the highest level after 20 years of accumulation. During the 30-years career, the collaborative ability of researchers has grown rapidly. In talent evaluation, the evaluation methods and indicators should be carefully selected according to the growth characteristics of researchers at different stages of their career and combined with the evaluation purpose.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

An empirical research on the impact of tutor identity on Chinese researchers′ career development

Yan Hao, Zhao Yandong, Zhou Jianzhong

2021, 42(5): 191-199.

Abstract ( 325 )

Based on the investigation data of the awardees of National Natural Science Foundation of China, we adopt event history analysis method to probe into the impact of tutor identity on Chinese front-line science researchers′ career development, as well as that of other relevant factors. Above all, we adopt Kaplan-Meier single factor analysis to inquire into the relationship between tutor identity and professional title promotion. The results of Kaplan-Meier analysis show that tutor scholarship status, tutor administration status and tutor identity type have similar effects on the professional title promotion of science researchers that they merely have a significant influence on senior title promotion, but affect the promotion of vice-senior title very little. In the meanwhile, with an advancement in tutor scholarship status, tutor administration status or tutor identity type, the survival hazard ratio of science researchers′ title promotion increases accordingly and the speed of promoting to senior title is accelerating as well. Besides, to make a further probe into the complicated connections between tutor identity and professional title promotion, the quantity of the published SCI/SSCI papers, PhD graduation college, affiliation, discipline category, postdoctoral experience, career mobility and gender are also introduced as controlled variables, and the COX proportional-hazards model for the promotion of vice-senior and senior title are constructed respectively.
The COX model regression analysis results are as followed: (1) Tutor identity does have a certain impact on the senior title promotion of science researchers. The survival hazard ratio of science researchers of higher tutor administration status is 29.1%, when promoting to senior title, higher than that of those of lower tutor administration status, which means that science researchers of higher tutor administration status tend to promote to senior title faster. By contrast, tutor scholar status does not affect the promotion to vice-senior title and its influence on senior title promotion is only close to but do not achieve significance, there doesn′t exist obvious promotion speed difference among science researchers with different tutor scholarship statuses. (2) Tutor identity type also has a significant influence on senior title promotion, but its impact on vice-senior title promotion is not obvious. Compared to science researchers of low scholarship-low administration type, the survival hazard ratios of those of high scholarship-high administration type, low scholarship-high administration type and high scholarship-low administration type are higher by 40.8%-52.1%. According to the hazard ratio differences mentioned above, types of tutor identity can be ranked in the following order: high scholarship-high administration type > low scholarship-high administration type > high scholarship-low administration type > low scholarship-low administration type, which means the higher the hierarchy of tutor status type is, the higher the survival hazard ratio of science researchers and the faster the speed of the promotion to senior title will be.
In addition, it is also showed that high-level published papers play an important role in science researchers′ title promotion, as the more high-level papers published, the faster the speed of title promotion will be, namely, scientific research ability is an elemental and essential factor for professional title promotion; compared to science researchers working in ordinary universities, science researchers working in project 985 universities have lower survival hazard ratios and slower promotion speed of senior title, their affiliation plays a negative role during the process; postdoctoral experience is beneficial to promote to senior title, science researchers with postdoctoral experience have much higher survival hazard ratios and promotion speed of senior title than those without postdoctoral experience. There exists gender difference in the promotion of professional titles, male science researchers are more likely to make it.
Due to the limitation of sampling survey data, there are some limitations and shortcomings in the research. Firstly, as all sample data originates from the awardees of Natural Science Foundation of China who are also characterized by excellent scientific research ability, it may have negative impact on the representativeness of the conclusions of the research. Secondly, on account of the differences in the evaluation system of scientific and technological talents between China and foreign countries, it is impossible for science researchers to go back to China, after obtaining the highest degree abroad, to update identity information of their tutors effectively. Therefore, this paper fails to incorporate the relevant information of the science researchers abroad into the specific analysis. Thirdly, although professional title promotion and its speed are important indicators of science researchers′ career development, they cannot represent the whole content of career development, it should also comprise many other dimensions such as academic output, project acquisition, scientific research posts and so on.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Accepting or banning advice? The effect of paternalistic leadership on team creativity

Geng Zizhen, Ma Qian, Ding Lin

2021, 42(5): 200-206.

Abstract ( 307 )

The development of theory about the antecedents of team creativity requires more attention paid to the role of eastern contextual leadership style. However, among studies focusing on the influence of leadership style on team creativity, leadership styles developed in western context such as transformational leadership and transactional leadership have attracted most attention. There is a lack of research on the influence of leadership style with eastern cultural characteristics (e.g., paternalistic leadership) on team creativity. Paternalistic leadership is a typical leadership style in Chinese traditional culture, with benevolence leadership, authoritarian leadership and moral leadership as its three core elements. It may activate or inhibit team creativity by influencing the voice behavior in the team level.
On account of the lack of research about the unstable influence of paternalistic leadership on team creativity, this study attempts to answer the following research question: whether, how, and when do different elements of paternalistic leadership influence team creativity? The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of the voicing mechanism through which different elements of paternalistic leadership influence team creativity. Drawing on implicit voice theory, this study tested the mediating effects of team promotive voice and team inhibitive voice through which the three elements of paternalistic leadership affect team creativity, as well as the moderating role of team traditionality in the above mediating effects. Implicit voice theory emphasizes the influence of external environment on human′s voice-related cognitive schema, behavior and output. It provides the theoretical foundation for this study to analyze the voicing mechanism through which paternalistic leadership influences team creativity.
Based on the implicit voice theory, on the one hand, under the influence of the three elements of paternalistic leadership, team members′ cognitive schemas and behavioral patterns related to team promotive voice and team inhibitive voice emerge to the team level, which further lead to changes in team creativity. Therefore, the relationships between the three elements of paternalistic leadership and team creativity are mediated by team promotive voice and team inhibitive voice. On the other hand, Chinese traditional culture emphasizes high power distance and the hierarchical relationship of superiority and inferiority. The stronger team traditionality is, the more team members will abide by their role as inferior person. Then team voice is more easily influenced by paternalistic leadership. Therefore, team traditionality plays a moderating role in the mediating paths through which different elements of paternalistic leadership influence team creativity via team voice.
Based on the above analysis, a theoretical model was built and the related hypotheses were proposed. We collected data of 113 working teams with the collaboration of 24 manufacturing and service firms in Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces in China. In order to avoid common source bias, the data were collected on different variables from multiple sources. Team members reported their collective perception of paternalistic leadership, team traditionality and team promotive/inhibitive voice. Team supervisors reported basic team information and team creativity. The specific research methods were as follows: Firstly, the rwg, ICC (1), and ICC (2) were calculated and the result justified aggregation of the data to the team level. Secondly, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and adopted the use of Average Variance Extracted (AVE) to assess the convergent and discriminant validity of our team-level constructs. The convergent and discriminant validity was satisfied. Thirdly, the Hierarchical regression was used to test the direct effects and the mediation effects. Lastly, Edwards′ nested equation path analysis was used to test hypotheses about the moderating role of team traditionality in the mediating effects of team promotive/inhibitive voice between paternalistic leadership and team creativity.
The following results were obtained by the empirical study: (1) Benevolence leadership and moral leadership positively affect team creativity through increasing team promotive/inhibitive voice; (2) Authoritarian leadership negatively influences team creativity through decreasing team promotive/inhibitive voice; (3) As team traditionality decreases to some extent, the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on team creativity through team inhibitive voice becomes not significant.
The innovative work in this study is summarized as follows: first, by investigating the influence of paternalistic leadership on team creativity, this study promotes the development of theory about the influence of eastern contextual leadership on team creativity. Scholars called for the integration of eastern constructs, phenomena and culture into organizational creativity research. Recent research about the influence of leadership style on team creativity paid little attention to the effect of paternalistic leadership which is a typical eastern contextual leadership style. This study showed that different elements of paternalistic leadership have different impacts on team creativity. It implies that future research could integrate eastern contextual construct into their research framework when developing theory about the antecedents of team creativity. Second, by clarifying the mediating role of team promotive/inhibitive voice in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and team creativity, we enrich knowledge about the internal mechanism through which leadership style influences team creativity from a voicing perspective. Existing researches about the internal mechanism between leadership style and team creativity mainly focus on the mediating effects of knowledge sharing and team communication. However, the potential mediating effect of team voice between leadership style and team creativity has been neglected. This study stressed the role of team voice in transforming leadership influence to team creativity. The results imply that future research on team creativity should pay more attention to the voicing mechanism responding to leadership influence. Third, by examining the moderating role of team traditionality in the indirect effect of different elements of paternalistic leadership on team creativity, we identify the boundary condition of the influence of paternalistic leadership on team creativity. The results showed that strength of the impact of authoritarian leadership on team creativity via team inhibitive voice is changed with the level of team traditionality. The research finding confirms that team traditionality is the key boundary condition to decide the strength of leadership influence on team creativity.
This research also provides significant practical implications for managers. By adjusting their leadership style and promoting team voice according to the findings in this study, managers will be able to activate team creativity and help their organization realize the innovation-driven strategy.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

The effect of scientific project leader′s network position on project′s innovation

Pan Wenhui, Zhao Pengwei, Ding Xianfeng

2021, 42(5): 207-217.

Abstract ( 234 )

As the main form to obtain support, scientific project plays an important role in promoting innovation which has attracted many scholars′ attention. In order to promote innovation plans comprehensively, the funding departments and scholars seek reasons restricting project innovations by analyzing several aspects.
In the process of managing research projects, scientific project leaders and other members who have indirect and direct connections with them form a collaboration network. In this network, scientific project leader′s high prestige attracts resources to facilitate the exchange of knowledge exchange and to set research goals. However, scientific project leaders may have different understanding about network members, and the connections among network members are also different. Scientific project leaders′ network position are thus constantly changing. Therefore, it is of great significance to analyze the effect of scientific project leaders′ network position on project innovation.
Existing literature has analyzed the effect of network position on innovation from both direct and indirect perspectives, which mainly focus on individual network position. In order to refine the results, network position is measured by centrality and structural holes. For example, in studies focusing on network structure′s direct effect, scholars analyzed centrality through experimental methods and believed that individuals with high centrality are more likely to receive information and ideas from other members, including political resources and emotional resources. The effect of structural holes on innovation is mainly reflected in the fact that structural holes provide opportunities and capabilities for knowledge creation among members which are not directly connected. Similarly, Chinese scholars evaluated knowledge creation and team innovation by focusing on the structural holes of this team. The result indicated that structural holes can promote the enterprises′ innovation. With the increasing complexity of network structure, network structure affects innovation indirectly through third factors. For example, foreign scholars have empirically demonstrated that network position has significant influence on personality disorder and therefore indirectly affects innovation. Analyzed the factors related to innovation, Chinese scholars believed that network position affects geographical proximity, knowledge acquisition and knowledge search, which can also promote innovation.
Previous studies have indeed confirmed the effect of network structure on innovation. However, seldom research has been done considering this issue from other views. As we all know, scientific project leader has a solid scientific research foundation and a large number of resources, including interpersonal resources and financial resources, which affect the progress of team members′ research output and thus promote innovation. Based on this background, the first aim of this paper is to test the effect of the scientific project leader′s network position on the project′s innovation.
Furthermore, recent thinking has focused on different levels of innovations and indicated that different levels of innovations have different cognitive structures. It means that in different innovation networks, factors affecting innovation are not always similar. Hence, the second aim of this paper is to explore whether the effects of the scientific project leader′s network position on the project′s innovation in different innovation networks are different.
On this basis, this paper collects data from Natural Science Foundation of China under the department of management science in 2012 to 2015, and constructs collaboration networks which include members from several projects. The project′s innovation is measured by the number of English papers, the number of Chinese paper, and the number of monographs. We set threshold of 20% innovation to divide collaboration networks into different levels, namely, high innovation networks, medium innovation networks and low innovation networks. To test the robustness of the results, we collect data in 2016 for the first research aim, and reset the threshold of 1/3 innovation for the second aim.
Using the method of negative binomial regression, the results indicate that the scientific project leader′s in-degree centrality in the collaboration networks positively affects the project′s innovation. While there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the scientific project leader′s structural holes and the project′s innovation. In addition, we find that network position has a larger effect on the research project′s innovation in collaboration networks with medium- and low-level innovation when compared with it in collaboration networks with high-level innovation. The results have past the two robustness tests, which prove the stability of our research.
The conclusion not only perfects the literature about the effect of networks structure on innovation, verifies the correction of the project management system proposed in our country, it also offers guidance for scientific project leader to design management plans. On the one hand, when the innovation ability in a team is high, the scientific project leader should encourage members to absorb available information from the external environment to enhance collaborations, e.g., international collaboration. The scientific project leader also should provide collaboration opportunities for unconnected members. On the other hand, when the innovation ability in a team is medium or low, the scientific project leader should manage the directly internal relationships. Furthermore, he should play an important role in communication among members.
Future work will be focus on considering more data from other research fields to extend the applicable scopes of the conclusions. In terms of the measurement of innovation, we will add some indicators, e.g., the introduction of talents, to measure the project′s innovation. Furthermore, different weights of outputs can be added to optimize the evaluate indicators for the project′s innovation. For example, we want to distinguish the importance of SCI, SSCI, and general papers.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Organizational unlearning, knowledge search and green innovation

Zhu Xuechun, Zhang Wei

2021, 42(5): 218-224.

Abstract ( 392 )

China is advancing the establishment of economic system for green development and building market-oriented green technological innovation system. Green economy and green innovation are main theme of China′s economy and business development in the future. Because innovation is path dependence, companies usually follow past successful paths to seek innovation. However, dynamically changing external environment may make past successful experience and knowledge become obstacles to enterprises′ innovation. Only by forgetting outdated experience and knowledge can the enterprises realize continuous innovation.
Organizational unlearning promoting innovation attracts widespread attention, but few researches study relationship between organizational unlearning and green innovation. There are few scholars analyzing function of knowledge search between organizational unlearning and green innovation. The paper divides knowledge search into breadth knowledge search and depth knowledge search. Through the questionnaire survey of 211 enterprises and hierarchical regression analysis, the research studies relationship among organizational unlearning, knowledge search and green innovation. The results showed as follows. Firstly, organizational unlearning has positive impact on green innovation, breadth knowledge search and depth knowledge search. Secondly, breadth knowledge search and depth knowledge search have positive impact on green innovation. Thirdly, breadth knowledge search and depth knowledge search play fully mediating effect between organizational unlearning and green innovation. Lastly, the mediating effect of depth knowledge search between organizational unlearning and green innovation is higher than breadth knowledge search.
The theoretical contributions are as follows. Firstly, only companies actively implement green innovation can they realize green innovation sustainably. This paper can enrich the research about impact of internal factors on green innovation, and it provides new ideas for exploring internal driving force of enterprises′ green innovation. Secondly, green innovation is guarantee for sustainable development of China′s economy. This article studies relationship among organizational unlearning, knowledge search and green innovation. It can enrich the research on organizational unlearning. Thirdly, the paper verifies that breadth knowledge search and depth knowledge search play fully mediating effect between organizational unlearning and green innovation. It not only provides path guidance for enterprises carrying out knowledge search but also enriches knowledge search theory. Lastly, this research verifies that breadth knowledge search and depth knowledge search are important paths for organizational unlearning promoting enterprises′ green innovation. And it reveals the influence mechanism of organizational unlearning on green innovation.
This research provides references for enterprises′ green innovation. Firstly, companies need to forget outdated knowledge to reduce barriers of green innovation. Then enterprises can create favorable conditions for green innovation. Secondly, only adopting organizational unlearning cannot promote green innovation effectively, enterprises should continue to search knowledge so that they can enrich knowledge base of green innovation. Lastly, in the process of knowledge search, companies should not only explore new knowledge but also exploit existing knowledge so as to promote green innovation.

References | Related Articles | Metrics

Archive