The Relationship Between Network Embeddedness And Technological Innovation Performance

In the background of global economic integration and in an increasingly fierce market competition, the improvement of the technological capabilities and core competitiveness is the guarantee for the survival and sustainable development of the enterprises. With the rise of worldwide manufacturing network, and with the rapid development of information technology, the world has undergone a fundamental paradigm change in the manufacturing field, enterprises therefore need to keep learning and innovating to gain competitive advantage, which rests with not only their internal resources but also a variety of resources and capabilities embedded in all kinds of social relations and difficult to imitate by competitors. As a result, network embeddedness has increasingly turned into a tool to gain access to external networks of knowledge and technology. And the research on network embeddedness has also obtained increasing attention from scholars at home and abroad. Under this background, we have investigated the influence of the network embeddedness on the technological innovation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises.Based on the retrospection of the network embeddedness theory and absorptive capacity theory, this paper proposes a concept model in which the network embeddedness of enterprises play a positive role in the absorptive capacity to facilitate innovation performance of the enterprises. And this paper further makes statistical research on 173 manufacturing enterprise as samples. The theory hypotheses of the concept model have been analyzed and validated through questionnaire, data collection, variable measurement, reliability and validity testing, multiple regression analysis and result discussions.Through theoretical analysis and quantitative empirical research, this paper suggests the following main conclusions:(1) The three dimensions of network embeddedness (trust, information sharing, joint problem solving) play significantly positive effect on technical innovation performance. Among them, the joint problem solving shows maximum correlationship with technological innovation. (2) Absorptive capacity plays a mediating role when the three dimensions of network embeddedness (trust, information sharing, joint problem solving) give impact on technological innovation. The potential absorptive capacity and the practical absorptive capacity of enterprises have significant positive correlations with the technological innovation performance.Our conceptual model suggests analysis tools and a combination method involving theoretical and statistical research for Chinese manufacturing enterprises, hoping to be a useful reference for future research.