Research On The Relationship Of Enterprise-Client Interaction,Inter-Organizational Relationship And Service Innovation Performance

Since the opening innovation concept was formally proposed,the service innovation practice of the Knowledge-Intensive Business Service enterprise(KIBS enterprise)has gone beyond the "business center"unilateral innovation paradigm and transformed the "client-value creating interactive innovation"into the"enterprise-client interaction paradigm".The innovation process involved by KIBS enterprise and client enterprise altogether implies a "valuable symbiotic relationship".Thus the effective value creating interface is brought about by such enterprise-Client interaction.Whether a KIBS enterprise could enhance its service and innovation standards by crossing boundaries between organizations,carrying out effective interaction between the clients and enterprises to integrate the creative resource(i.e.knowledge,demands and experiences owned by client enterprises)and building good relations of collaborations between organizations on both sides or not has become the key issue leading to the success of KIBS enterprises.Therefore,the interaction between services innovation KIBS enterprises and their clients has aroused wide attraction in academic area and became the core concept in understanding and explaining the clients behaviors in innovation cooperation and as well as their performances.Previous studies are more concerned about the impact of the interaction between KIBS enterprises and their clients on the innovation of corporate services.Such interaction has been widely recognized to have a bridging effect for the collaborative activities between KIBS enterprises and clients while strengthening the potential of both sides on the supply of innovation resources and capability redevelopment.Thus a solid relationship between both organizations would be built up and service performance level would also be enhanced.However,there exists two problems in current research on collaborative innovation:First,What the research focused on is the positive impact of enterprise-client interactions on the service innovation performance,while negative effects are not adequately covered.It is worth noting that more and more cases have indicated the coexistence of free-riding behaviors and collaborative efforts on creation.Secondly,current researches are generally based on the perspective of information transformation by focusing on the process of obtaining,using,transferring and integrating information between different parties of the cooperation to analyze the exact mechanism of the impact of the interaction between enterprises and clients on the performance of service innovations,while further studies conducted in the aspect of cross-organization relationship to investigate the specific mechanism of such interactions is still in need.For this reason,our study comprehensively utilizes the theory of client collaborative innovation,the theory of cross-organization relationship,the theory of resource dependence,the theory of service dominancy,the theory of transaction costs,etc.The theoretical background of the logic chain("Enterprise-Client interaction-cross-organization relationship—service innovation performance")and the complete S-C-P study paradigm could be adequately developed by conducting a survey on the service innovation project about fundamental problem of how the interaction between KIBS enterprise and clients could influence the service innovation performance,given an underlying scenario which involves the collaborative innovation between KIBS enterprises and its clients.In order to clarify the impact of enterprise-client interaction effects on service innovation performance,The study,based on relationship between organizations,introduces cross-organization relationships are a variable to analyze the exact mechanism.Meanwhile,to reveal the two-side effect of the clients behaviors in the collaborative innovation,this research tries to evaluate cross organization relationship using long term cooperation and exchange conflicts as measurements to study the two-side effect of enterprise-client interaction on cross organization relationships.To clarify the approach to manage client behaviors in collaborative cooperation,our study,based on the theory of contingency management,introduces both contract governance and relationship governance to explore about effective modes to manage enterprise-client interactions.This study discusses the following questions in depth:What are the key elements of enterprise-client interaction and their impact on service innovation performance?How does the enterprise-client interaction exert influence on service innovation performances exactly?Whether the two-side effect exists?How to apply contract governance and relationship governance?And what is the effect of successfully managing enterprise-client interaction on cross organization relationship?The research has reached the following conclusions:(1)During the collaborative innovation between KIBS enterprise and clients,enterprise-client interaction has a positive impact on service innovation performance.Enterprise-client interaction,acting as a "bridge mechanism" which connects the boundaries between organizations for KIBS enterprises to conduct service innovation practices with clients,plays a role in promoting service innovation performance levels.The study has conducted case study to four innovation service projects and performed statistical analysis towards 308 sample questionnaires for service innovation projects.The result shows that during the collaborative innovation process of KIBS enterprises,service innovation performance levels could be significantly promoted by collaborative organization,joint decision-making,resource sharing and task cooperation(2)Enterprise-client interactions,in the course of collaborative innovation,influence service innovation process through influencing long term cooperation between organizations and exchange conflicts.The research combines case studies and empirical studies to confirm that the effect of interactions between KIBS enterprises and clients makes its way through long term cooperation as well as exchange conflicts between organizations as intermediaries.These two paths together constitute the basis for enterprise-client interaction mechanisms on service innovation performance.(3)In the course of collaborative innovation,enterprise-client interaction could either have positive effects or negative ones.The study confirms the coexistence of the positive and negative impacts on enterprise-client interaction for organizations,which would therefore exert the two-side effects on service innovation performance through cross organization relationship as a media,thus revealing the fact that client would not only participate in the process of value creation,but also worth occupation.Consequently the two-side effect of enterprise-client interaction during collaborative innovation would be exemplified.(4)Contract governance and relationship governance play an important role in the enterprise-client interaction mechanism of organizational relationships.This study,based on contingency theory of management,introduces both contract governance and relationship governance as variables to investigate their mediating effect on enterprise-client interaction and cross organization relationship.Empirical results show that contract governance and relationship governance could significantly affect the way how different types of enterprise-client interactions could affect cross organization relationship and promote long-term cooperation while inhibiting exchange conflicts between organizations in various ways.Compared with existing relevant researches,the improvements of this study are mainly reflected in following aspects:(1)Our research quantifies the composition of the characteristics of enterprises interaction in collaborative innovation,analyzes the enterprise-client interaction and relations between the organizations and service innovation performance,demonstrates the mechanism that enterprise-client interaction affects the performance of service innovation by influencing the relationship between organizations,extends the connotation and extension of client cooperation innovation theory,and deepens the theory of inter-organizational relations.The study defines the concept of enterprise-client interaction in collaborative innovation,divides the interaction into some dimensions from the structure dimension(common organization,common decision-making)and process dimension(resource sharing,task collaboration),and scrutinizes the effects of different dimensions on service innovation performance.At the same time,our paper also studies the specific path by which the enterprise-client interaction acts on the service innovation performance through the influence of the relationship among organization,thus further opens the black box of mechanisms that governing the effect of enterprise-client interaction acts on the service innovation performance.(2)It clarifies the double edged sword effect of enterprise-client interaction in collaborative innovation,verifies the dual effect of enterprise-client interactive behaviors in the process of collaborative innovation,reveals the coexistence of the clients' value creation and clients' value grabbing behaviors,and expands the service leading logic theory and the transaction cost theory.In the process of KIBS enterprise-client collaborative innovation,the existence of special investment of KIBS enterprise and the sense of privilege and superiority brought by the transferring of the ownership of professional knowledge to the client enterprise in the process of cooperation would increase the uncertainty of the client behavior during the later phases of cooperation,further leading to grabbing behaviors which would finally result in value destruction.The study verifies the existence of double-edged sword effect of clients'interactive behavior during collaborative innovation from the empirical level,and reveals the coexistence of client value creation and value grabbing behaviors.(3)It discusses the different mechanisms of influence on enterprise client interaction and relations between organizations by contract governance and relationship governance,which are two different ways of cooperation governance which can manage the enterprise-client interactions effectively,thus extends the related research on the interaction boundary of the collaboration innovation between the enterprises and the clients,and enriches the theory of the relationship among the organizations.In this study,we introduce contract governance and relationship governance to explore the management method of enterprise-client interaction from the enterprise controllable perspective.The results shows that contract governance and relationship governance are two effective ways,which can be used in the process of collaborative innovation to implement effective management of enterprise-client interaction that could be applied during collaborative innovations to effectively manage enterprise-client interactions,to provide theoretical support for the practical activities of enterprise service innovation,and to expand the applicability of the theory of organizational relations in the field of client collaborative innovation research.