The Study Of The Relationship Between Patenting Motivation, Behavior And Performance In High-tech Enterprises

With the global knowledge-based economy, as well as the rapid development of technology information, the overall national strength based on high technology is becoming increasing fierce. Intellectual property especially patent has become the key and strategic resources of a country, region and an enterprise participating in international competition. Grindley and Teece(1997) pointed out that high-technology firms should pay attention to intellectual property management. Rivette and Kline (2000) who wrote for Harvard Business Review put forward the patent strategy had become a important part of corporation strategy in knowledge-based economy, especially for technological corporation whose competitive advantage coming from intellectual property. Top management increasingly placed the patent strategy on the corporation strategy level. The strategic management and use of patent can significantly enhance a company's success in three broad ways:by establishing a proprietary market advantage, by improving financial performance and by enhancing overall competitiveness. Therefore, the search for how to motivate high-technology enterprises to patent and strategically use patent to improve organizational performance and competitive advantage become the popular focus of attention for theorist and practitioners.This study takes Chinese high-tech enterprises as background, based on the thoroughly literature review of research in this field, following the core concept of patenting motivation, three parts of research work are conducted.First of all, based on the literature review and expert interview, the study used open-questionnaire to survey patenting motivation of high-tech enterprises. Through the data coding and content analysis, the patenting motivation of high-technology enterprises conclude 4 dimensions:market protection, technology exchange, block and policy acquisition. Based on the sample data, the study explored a questionnaire including the 4 dimension of patenting motivation, the results showed that the measure scale has good reliability and validity. At the same time, this study compared these dimensions with foreign research results and found there is similarity and differences between the dimensions due to the economy and law difference.Second, this research further used the model we had constructed and the scale we had developed above to the study of organizational performance. And used four kinds of patenting motivation, two kinds of patenting behaviors as mediator factors to build and test an organizational performance improvement model. Based on the data acquired through questionnaire administration, the research tests the hypothesis and theoretical model. We got the results as follows:(1) patenting motivation plays an important role in the improving of patenting behaviors, however, the role of four patenting motivation plays varies from one to another, in which block motivation and technology motivation has no significant effect on the improvement of patenting applications, market protection motivation and policy acquisition motivation has significant effect on the patenting applications, technology exchange motivation has no significant effect on patent quality, market protection motivation, block motivation and policy acquisition motivation has significant effect on the patent quality. (2) Patenting behaviors of high-tech enterprises plays an important role in the improving of organizational performance. However, patenting applications and patent quality plays varies from one to another, in which the effect of patent quality on profit performance and growth performance is higher than that of patenting applications. (3) The patenting behavior is the mediator between patenting motivation and organizational performance. Patenting applications is the full-mediator between market protection motivation and profit performance, policy acquisition and growth performance, patent quality is the full-mediator between market protection motivation and profit performance, between block motivation, policy acquisition and growth performance. But patenting behavior is not the mediator between technology exchange motivation and organizational performance.Finally, this research induced contextual factors into the model of patenting motivation, patenting behaviors and organizational performance, explored the change of relationship between them. The results showed vary size, age, nature and industry all has certain different influence on the patenting motivation, and the relationship between patenting motivation, behaviors, and organizational performance had some change. At last, the research gives out reasonable explanation and analysis of the hypothesis.The main contribution of this study is as follows:(1) Rely on the patenting motivation theory. this study conduct a basic research on patenting motivation of Chinese high technology enterprises. which has been divided into four dimensions:market protection, technology exchange, block and policy acquisition, and developments a reliable and valid scale using the sample data. (2) Proposed and verified the model of patenting motivation-patenting behaviors—organizational performance. (3) Introduce the contextual factors into the model above and verifies the role of them.