Firms’ Cognition,Dynamic Capabilities And Performance

In 21 st century, rapid development of technology, acceleration of information age, and the competitive environment of globalization make firms face the complex environment of rapid change. In this dynamic environment, improving the dynamic capabilities of firms has become a key success factor. Therefore, exploring how to enhance the dynamic capabilities of firms is of great significance to guide the practice of management. However, in the field of strategic management research, although the concept of dynamic capabilities has aroused wide concern of researchers, it still has not yet reached a consensus on its definition and dimensions. At the same time, it is still in the exploratory stage to explore the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities. Thus, based on the existing theoretical and empirical research, this study tries to clearly define dynamic capabilities, and to explore the influcence of dynamic capabilities on performance from the perspective of cognition. Theoretically, this study helps to supplement the gap of previous studies, while practically this study can be used to guide firms to obtain and maintain long-term competitive advantage via enhancing dynamic capabilities.Based on cognitive theory, resource-based view, dynamic capability theory and other relevant theories, this study follows the logic of "Cognition-Dynamic Capabilities-Performance", studies the mechanism of how different cognitive factors influence dynamic capabilities and firm performance from the perspective of cognition, and tests the moderating effect of environmental dynamism on the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firm performance. Specifically, the research contents of this study can be divided into the following parts:first, this paper studies the definition and dimension division of dynamic capabilities; second, this paper explores the influence of different cognitive factors on dynamic capabilities; third, this paper reveals how cognition influences firm performance through the mechanism of dynamic capabilities; fourth, this paper tests the influence of environmental dynamism.Adopting questionnaire survey research methods, this study obtains a total of 1235 valid questionnaires from 247 firms operating in manufacturing and information technology services industry (in order to improve the reliability of the data, five copies of the questionnaires are collected in each firm). Subsequently, this study conducts consistency analysis, reliability analysis, validity analysis, and common method bias analysis. Through structural equation model and multiple regression statistical method, hypotheses of this study are tested. The main research contents and related conclusions of this study are as follows:Firstly, based on the literature review and preliminary interview materials, this study proposes that the dynamic capabilities is mainly composed of four dimensions: learning capability, integration capability, reconfiguration capability and alliance capability. Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, this study confirms that the measurement scale of dynamic capabilities has good reliability and validity.Secondly, this study suggests that the main cognitive factors affecting the dynamic capabilities can be divided into strategic information seeking and strategic information sense-making. This paper explores the impact of these cognitive factors on dynamic capabilities and firm performance, as well as the mediating role of dynamic capabilities. In this study, the structural equation modeling technique is used to revise the research model. The results show that information association and threat cognition has a positive impact on learning capability, integration capability, reconfiguration capability and alliance capability; attention dynamics has a positive impact on learning capability, integration capability and reconfiguration capability; alertness has a positive impact on integration capability and alliance capability; opportunity cognition has a positive effect on learning capability, integration capability and alliance capability; integration, reconfiguration and alliance capability have significant effects on firm growth performance, while the influence of learning capability on growth performance is not significant.Finally, this study examines the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firm performance. The results of hierarchical regression analysis show that technology turbulence negatively moderates the relationship between learning capability and firm growth performance, while positively moderates the relationship between integration capability and firm growth performance; market turbulence positively moderates the relationship between both learning and integration capability and firm growth performance; competition turbulence negatively moderates the relationship between learning capability and firm growth performance, while positively moderates the relationship between both integration and alliance capability and firm growth performance.In conclusion, based on cognitive perspective, this paper explores the impact of cognition on dynamic capabilities and firm performance, and the mediating role of dynamic capabilities. Meanwhile, the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firm performance are also tested. So this study enriches the theory of the current strategic management, provides empirical supports for the current theoretical research, and can guide firms to achieve sustainable development and maintain competitive advantage in the dynamic environment to a certain extent.