Innovation Network, Innovation Search And Innovation Performance:an Empirical Research Of Cluster Firms

The accelerating of economic globalization and the deepening of international industrial division make the traditional industry organizations and their innovation paradigm undergo great changes. Especially, the emergence of global manufacturing network (GMN) provides the importantly strategic opportunities for Chinese local cluster firms to participate in the global competition and cooperation, learn and innovate. Under this background, how to make full use of the GMN’s spacial agglomeration effect and integrate innovation resources to enhance independent innovation capability and how to establish local key industrial linkages and interaction to upgrade industrial value chain are the crucial practical issues for Chinese local cluster firms. At present, the majority of studies pay attention to the openly networked innovation of cluster firms in the process of the transformation and upgrading. However, we find in the relative literature that although the existing research has outlined the importance of cluster firm’s innovation network and the innovation benefits it brought, the relative empirical studies on action mechanism and context of how cluster firm’s innovation network influences innovation performance are still insufficient, and those research results also have some of the differences.So, based on the research samples of Chinese local cluster firms in GMN and the relative research results, this dissertation focuses upon the basic research question of "how innovation network influences innovation performance" and establishes the theoretical framework of "innovation network-innovation search-innovation performance" according to the logic of "motivation-behavior-outcome". Specifically, this research gradually explores the following three closely related sub-questions: First, what is the relationship between a cluster firm’s innovation network and its innovation performance? Second, what is the action mechanism of innovation network on innovation performance? Third, what are the influences of absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty on the mechanism?In order to answer these aforementioned questions, this dissertation combines normative analysis and empirical analysis and gradually discusses three sub-researches. 1. Based on literature review and investigation, the first sub-research puts forwards a primary theoretical supposition, and then carries out five explorative case studies of Chinese local cluster firms to deduce an initial theoretical framework of action mechanism of innovation network on innovation performance and ten initial hypotheses. The result indicates that the tie strength, tie breadth and position centrality of cluster firm’s innovation network can enhance the innovation performance through the improvement of quality and pace of innovation search, so as to provide a theoretical conception based on practice for the following studies.2. Based on the initial conception of the first sub-research, the second sub-research further launches theoretical study and analysis, and then proposes a basic concept model and the research hypotheses of cluster firm’s innovation network influencing its innovation performance.256local cluster firms from China’s Yangtze River Delta are surveyed via questionnaires, and then Reliability and Validity Analysis, Factor Analysis (FA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) are applied to testify empirically the research hypotheses and modify the concept model to conclude with a final model of the action mechanism of cluster firm’s innovation network on innovation performance.3. On the basis of these above-mentioned sub-researches, the third sub-research introduces two types of moderate variables including absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty to explore more deeply the influence mechanism of innovation network on innovation search. The developed research hypotheses and moderating effect model are verified and modified in a survey of206local cluster firms from China’s Yangtze River Delta.Through the above research, this dissertation draws some primary conclusions.1. Cluster firm’s innovation network has a positive impact on its own innovation performance. Under the agglomeration effect of GMN, the tie strength, tie breadth and position centrality of cluster firm’s innovation network are all beneficial to the improvement of innovation performance.2. Cluster firm’s innovation network impacts innovation performance indirectly through the mediating role of innovation search. Concretely speaking, tie strength promotes innovation performance through improving innovation search quality and innovation search pace; tie breadth facilitates innovation performance through enhancing innovation search quality; position centrality influences positively innovation performance through increasing innovation search quality and innovation search pace; and innovation search quality has a positive effect on innovation search pace.3. Absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty play significant moderating roles in the influence mechanism of cluster firm’s innovation network on innovation search. In detail, the positive impacts of tie breadth as well as position centrality on innovation search quality tend to increase as absorptive capacity improves, while the positive effect of position centrality on innovation search pace tends to increase as as absorptive capacity improves; the positive effect of tie breadth on innovation search quality tends to increase as environmental uncertainty increases, while the positive effects of ties strength on innovation search quality and innovation search pace tend to decrease as environmental uncertainty increases.As a whole, these findings from this dissertation deepen our understanding on "how innovation network influences innovation performance". Several contributions are as follows.1. This research reveals the essence of the action process of cluster firm’s innovation network on innovation performance, and to a certain extent can effectively solve the problems of lock-in and upgrading dilemma. Synthesizing theory research, case study and large-scale sample statistical analysis, this dissertation analyses in depth the action mechanism of cluster firm’s innovation network on innovation performance in the open environment. At the same time, it builds up linkages among theories of the openly networked innovation, organizational innovation search and technological innovation, and brings the local ties and non-local ties of innovation network into the same analysis framework on the basis of the analysis and grasp of network "duality". This research opens the black box of how cluster firm’s innovation network acts on the innovation performance, puts forward a theoretical framework of "innovation network-innovation search-innovation performance", and emphasizes the mediating effect of innovation search, which complements and expands theories of industrial cluster innovation and network organization.2. This dissertation uncovers the important connotation and role of innovation search for local cluster firms operating in GMN. Based on theoretical study, exploratory case study, expert opinions and statistics analysis, this research brings extra-incluster search and intra-cluster search together, and abstracts innovation search into innovation search quality and innovation search pace. And it further builds and tests the measurement scale of innovation search, on basis of which the roles of innovation search in cluster firm’s networks are examined. The conclusions further deepen our understanding of innovation search theory. It’s an enrichment of research on organizational innovation search and cluster firm’s innovation.3. The dissertation elucidates the influence mechanism of the different absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty on the relationshio between cluster firm’s innovation network and innovation search. Contingency theory in network research has been emphasized, but the related research is still insufficient. Thus, this research points out that the effects of Cluster firm’s innovation network on innovation search can have certain difference in different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics, and introduces absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty as important contextual factors into the action mechanism. The results show that the effects of cluster firm’s innovation network on innovation search are moderated by absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty. The findings extend existing research on cluster firm’s innovation network and organizational innovation search, and provide the new management thinking about how cluster firm choose appropriate innovation network configuration and innovation search mode according to its internal resources conditions and external environment characteristics.