The Study Of Dimensions And Empirical Research Of Organizational Inertia Of The Knowledge-intensive Enterprises

The knowledge-intensive enterprises become the main business unit with high innovation in the modern economic society due to their unique organizational culture, flexible organizational structure and resource component (professional knowledge system and intelligence capital of knowledge workers), which obtain the main focus of business men and scholars as well. Because innovation is the root of the survival of knowledge-intensive enterprises, they have higher technology intense and bigger innovative pressure and therefore their organizational inertia are special. It has important meaning in the theory and the reality to study inertia dimensions of knowledge-intensive enterprises and the relative empirical practice which can help to tell the double functions of organizational inertia under the environmental change and indicate the firm developmental trace objectively and fairly and promote the development and innovation of knowledge-intensive enterprises.Enterprises have inertia like the natural object and follow the inertia law as well. Organizational inertia is a double-edge sword. To its advantage, the organizational inertia is good for the inner stability of enterprises to simplify the problem-solving approaches and process and set up the accordant way among parts of the enterprise. It can maintain the stability and accordance of the whole development and meets the demands of order and regularity with the improvement of efficiency of the enterprise. However, to its disadvantage, it makes the company loses the chance of innovation and active learning. Therefore, in the ever-changing environment, how to tell and evaluate and strengthen the organizational inertia management of knowledge-intensive enterprises is the first premise to fulfil the healthy and sustainable development.The paper finds that organizational inertia of knowledge-intensive enterprises has strong endogenesis, being close to environments and is the result of co-working by the inside and outside change. It studies the whole organizational behaviour, not the individuals, but individuals within a firm can share the recognized value system to impact the whole organizational behaviour and recognized values. Organizational inertia of knowledge-intensive enterprises is multi-dimension which its dimensions are determined by their characters and impact factors. Organizational inertia exists all the times, as one of the basic natures. In the dynamic knowledge era, outside forces occur frequently and keeping the original conditions brings the negative function when it does not match the new conditions and even conflicts with each other.From the firm level, there is logic thinking ---inertia, organizational inertia, knowledge-intensive enterprises’ organizational inertia, inertia dimensions and model, exploratory analysis and confirmatory analysis of inertia dimensions, empirical analysis and testing. It anal sizes what the organizational inertia is and what are its components in a firm. In the multi-theoretical perspective, it anglicizes the nature and core meaning of organizational inertia of knowledge-intensive enterprises. The study pilots a new research way from the original persuading and symptomatic ones. The main research issues and results are stated as follows.(1) The study on the basis of the existing literature, defined organizational inertia, established an evaluation model of its three dimensions and also tested the reliability and validity of the questionnaire in the research context through an empirical research. The results show that in the three-dimension organizational inertia is valid and the structural, knowledge and cultural dimensions questionnaire of organizational inertia is of acceptable reliability and validity.(2) On the basis of existing questionnaire, developed the questionnaire for organizational learning and product innovation, and also tested the reliability and validity of the questionnaire in the research context through an empirical research. The results show that the scales of organizational learning and product innovation are valid and the constructs in questionnaire is of acceptable reliability and validity respectively.(3) The study established a theoretical model with organizational inertia as the independent variable, organizational learning as the mediating variable and product innovation as the dependent variable, and also controlled for enterprise ownership. The results show that in the given research context, the three dimensions of the organizational inertia of knowledge-intensive enterprises has a significant influence on product innovation directly and indirectly; organizational learning has a partial mediation effect between organizational inertia and product innovation. In the given hypothesis testing, one is partially proved and one is unproved and the rest is proved. From the features of knowledge-intensive enterprises, the study is highlighted the three dimensions of organizational inertia which are structural, knowledge and cultural dimensions in terms of organizational structure, organizational knowledge and organizational culture of the knowledge-intensive enterprises and it has been proved quantification. It established a new academic framework to explore the relationship between the three dimensions of organizational inertia with those of organizational learning and product innovation. In this way, it demonstrates the real constrained fact of innovation for the knowledge-intensive enterprises in view of deeper levels and then generates the accordant policies and regulations for the development of knowledge-intensive enterprises. The study stresses the new way of research for the understanding of innovation and organizational inertia in order to throw off the yoke and build the theoretical foundation for knowledge-intensive enterprises to fulfil the sustaining and healthy innovation and development.There are three innovations in this study.The first is the innovation of study view, which is based on the level of enterprises to enlarge the scope of inertia. It develops the multi-theory organizational inertia from the single hierarchical structural inertia. It introduces the contingency theory and resource dependence theory to analysis the inner nature and mechanism from the angle of environmental change based on the population ecology.The second is the innovation of the study content, which makes knowledge-intensive enterprises to be the object of the study and research, and their organizational inertia is defined as the structural, knowledge and cultural dimensions in the ever-changing environment. It sets up inertia dimensions modeling with the help of the characters and impact factors, and puts inertia dimensions into the empirical researching framework ---organizational inertia, organizational learning and product innovation. This enriches the relative theories of organizational inertia and builds the theoretical foundation to utilize and manage organizational inertia.The third innovation is method application, which uses exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to explore inertia dimensions and tests the reliability and validity of the questionnaire in the research context through an empirical research. These methods test the possibility of quantification of organizational inertia.