Study On Incentive Mechanisms Of Technological Innovation Based On Slack Resources

Slack resources not only can cushion the shortage of a firm's resources, maintain the organizations harmony, mitigate the conflicts from environment but also are an important catalyst of innovation and organizational changes. Slack resources promote the innovation and development of a firm. Nowadays, the domestic and international studies about them have paid more and more attention to the relationships between slack resources and technological innovation, but no studies to date have examined how to promote employees'innovative behaviors based on slack resources. Accordingly, on the basis of the resource slack concepts, innovation concepts, incentive theory, this dissertation studies the incentive issues for technological innovation based on slack resources. Concretely, on the basis of introducing the background, purpose, meaning, content of this study and reviewing relevant research literatures, this dissertation explores the incentive mechanisms for technological innovation based on slack resources by four sections.Firstly, this dissertation explores the concepts of the innovative behaviors based on slack resources. From the viewpoint of the existing forms and available discretion of slack resources in enterprises, this dissertation divides the slack resources into physical slack, human resource slack, and financial slack, and brings forward the inverted U-shaped relationship model between physical slack and technological innovation, the inverted N-shaped relationship model between human resource slack and technological innovation, the N-shaped relationship model between financial slack and technological innovation. From the resource-supply angle, this dissertation divides technological innovation into two innovation model which based on newly-added resources and slack resources, and puts forward the concept of technological innovation based on slack resources. Furthermore, the dissertation analyses the characteristics and output advantages of technological innovation based on slack resources.Secondly, this dissertation explores the incentive issues of technological innovation entirely based on individual's searching for firm's slack resources; and brings forward the best incentive contracts of technological innovation based on slack resources under the condition of different levels of slack resources. When the levels of slack resources of a firm are low, the firm should weaken the incentive for the technological innovation based on slack resources; when the levels of slack resources of a firm are moderate, the firm should moderately inspire"innovating"and"getting slack resources"; when the levels of slack resources of a firm are high, the firm should strengthened the incentive for the"innovating"and"getting slack resources". Thus, the firm can modulate the relationship between slack resources and technological innovation by incentive. In addition, this dissertation introduces the concept of efficiency risk, which explains theoretically one kind of phenomenon generally existing in firms that one to make the significant contribution to the firm is not certain to be able to share his corresponding shares.Thirdly, this paper explores and brings forward the best incentive contracts for employee to use slack resources to do technological innovation which is under the conditions of the firm's newly-added resources. When the cost function of"innovating"and"getting slack"is independent, the best incentive contracts of every action is independent and the best incentive factor for"innovating"has nothing to do with the allocation of resources; When the cost function of the two actions is complementary, the firm should heavily strengthened the incentive for the"innovating"and"getting slack"of the employee if the firm's marginal income is less than marginal cost of the newly-added resources invested, and lightly strengthened the incentive for the"innovating"and"getting slack"of the employee if the firm's marginal income is more than marginal cost of the newly-added resources invested; When the cost function of the two actions is substitute, the firm should heavily weakened the incentive for the"innovating"and lightly weakened the incentive for the"getting slack"if the firm's marginal income is less than marginal cost of the newly-added resources invested, and the firm should lightly weakened the incentive for the"innovating"and heavily weakened the incentive for the"getting slack"if the firm's marginal income is more than marginal cost of the newly-added resources invested.Finally, this dissertation brings forward the best incentive contracts for R&D, marketing, production personnel's technological innovation based on slack resources on the basis of analyzing their innovative behaviors based on slack resources, and further explains these contracts combining typical cases. For R&D personnel, the firm should strengthened the incentive for the"formal innovating"action to promote the performance of"slack innovating"if the outcome of R&D personnel"slack innovating"is not measurable. For marketing personnel, on the one hand, the firm can directly award his"slack innovating"achievements according to the best incentive contracts, on the other hand, the firm should strengthened the incentive for the"marketing duty"to promote indirectly the performance of"slack innovating". For production personnel, on the one hand, the firm can directly award his"slack innovating"achievements according to the best incentive contracts, on the other hand, when the production personnel's"production tasks"are full, the firm should weaken the incentive for"production tasks"to induce them to do more"slack innovating"works, and strengthen the incentive for"production tasks"to induce them to do more"slack innovating"works when the production personnel's"production tasks"are not full.