Firms’ Technological Coopetition,Network Embeddedness And Innovation Performance In Technology Trade Networks

Technology trade network(TTN)as an emerging topic has received an increasing attention from both scholars and practitioners.Building interconnected TTN is necessary for technology factor market development,which is conducive to innovation-driven economic growth.Recently,technology trade activities are exploding,gradually forming networks.Identifying network embeddedness mechanisms and embeddedness outcomes have important significance.However,both theoretical analysis and empirical research on TTN still lag behind the practical needs.In the field of autonomous vehicles,inter-firms’ competition and cooperation are complicated.The rapidly technological changes and cross-integration have spawned an interactive situation of technology trades and technological coopetition.Understanding the interaction effects between technology trade and technological coopetition on innovation performance can help firms achieve innovation advantages.Scholars have proposed that research on technology trade should be building at the network level rather than the market level in consideration of reducing transaction costs.Although the network as governance mechanism for technology trade was proposed twenty years ago,there are only a few empirical studies of technology trade using the network approach till now.To date,hardly any empirical studies investigated what drives firms embedding in TTN and whether TTN embeddedness can increase firms’ innovation performance.In order to address this research question,this study adopts network embeddedness theory,coopetition theory,transaction cost economics and relational view to investigate the impact of firms’technological coopetition on TTN embeddedness,and the impact of technological coopetition and TTN embeddedness on innovation performance.Using a panel dataset of 1707 firms(2008-2017)in the autonomous vehicles industry,our empirical analyses yielded several new findings.First,firms’ technological competition and cooperation affect TTN embeddedness.Technological cooperation can reduce firms’ transaction costs and improve their information advantages and trust.So plentiful cooperation are conducive to TTN embeddedness.Besides,technological competition can promote firms embedding in TTN to obtain external knowledge or disperse competitive pressure,but competition also may expose firms to opportunistic behaviors of trading partners.Therefore,the intensity of competition has an inverted U-shaped impact on TTN embeddedness.When a firm has both competitive and cooperative relationships,the degree of knowledge similarity is conducive to the absorption and integration of external knowledge;meanwhile,competition decreases the trust,and leads firms’ core knowledge is more vulnerable to leakage.Therefore,moderate coopetition is most conducive to TTN embeddedness.Second,when a focal firm embeds in TTN,inbound embeddedness can enhance its innovation performance.Conversely,outbound embeddedness will decrease the focal firm’s innovation performance.When a focal firm has plentiful cooperation relationships,the positive effects of TTN inbound embeddedness on innovation are strengthened,and the negative effects of TTN outbound embeddedness on innovation are weakened.When a focal firm faces fierce competition,the positive effects of inbound embeddedness in the TTN on innovation are strengthened,and the negative effects of outbound embeddedness in the TTN on innovation are also strengthened.When a focal firm has deep coopetition degree,the positive effects of inbound embeddedness in the TTN on the focal firm’s innovation are strengthened,and the negative effects of outbound embeddedness in the TTN on the focal firm’s innovation are also strengthened.Finally,technological competition and cooperation not only have a direct impact on firms’ innovation performance,but also have an indirectly affect through TTN embeddedness.The inbound and outbound embeddedness of TTN has partial mediating effects between firms’ technological competition,cooperation,coopetition and their innovation performance.When a firm has coopetition relationships,which can encourage the firm to deal with competitive pressure and gain competitive advantage through technology trades.Meanwhile,as competition increasing,the willingness of trade technology reduces.Therefore,the intensity of technological coopetition has an inverted U-shaped impact on innovation performance.Our findings contribute the theories of network embeddedness and coopetition,and also enrich the empirical evidences of TTN.Besides,this study also provides some useful managerial guidance for firms on how to make technology trade decisions,and how to improve the innovation performance through embedding in the TTN.