A Study On The Mechanism Between Corporate Social Capital And Technological Innovation Performance

When a firm’s own resources cannot meet the needs of developing andimplementing strategies, it begins to seek for business partners. With a powerfulsocial relational network, firms can get more information about the market anddevelop it into some knowledge which supports the development and implementationof strategies. To solve the problems with transferring critical knowledge, firms arerequired to improve the absorption efficiency of knowledge. And previous studieshave offered many different conclusions.Considerable attention has been paid to the critical role of corporate socialcapital in the process of improving technological innovation performance. However,there appears to be heterogeneous research outcomes. This paper focuses on themoderating effect of absorptive capacity between corporate social capital andtechnological innovation performance. Reasons are examined to answer why there areso many differentiated conclusions in current studies. Results show that while firm’slongitudinal relationship capital has a significant negative effect on technologicalinnovation performance, social relationship capital has a significant positive effect.And the impact of horizontal relationship capital on technological innovationperformance is not statistically significant. As to firm’s knowledge capturing andapplying abilities, they both have significant positive effects on technologicalinnovation performance. What’s more, the ability of knowledge application is indeedan important factor which significantly moderates longitudinal relationship capital’snegative association with technological innovation performance.Firms are able to create new knowledge and realize commercialization step bystepin the social relational network, based on promoting the level of technologicalintegration by establishing strategic cooperative partnership with professionalresearch institutions. Thus, firms are suggested to strengthen their absorptive capacity,especially the ability of knowledge application, by constantly laying emphasis on thepromotion of internal management standards and the optimization of processes.Otherwise, reinforcement of contacts with the government alone will only bringdamage to technological innovation performance.