The Impact Of Geographical Distance On Innovation Performance Of Technology M&A

With the increasingly fierce competition in high-tech industry,enterprises have more and more urgent demand for external innovation resources.As a key means for enterprises to obtain external technical resources,technology M&A will help enterprises to quickly acquire the technical resources of the target.With the continuous expansion of the search range and search distance of external technological innovation resources,geographical distance is becoming an inevitable problem in the decision-making and process of technology M&A.Specifically,in the target selection stage before M&A,the information asymmetry caused by distance will affect the target search and information acquisition of the acquirer,and then affect the decision of M&A;In the resource integration stage after M&A,enterprises will inevitably face the transaction cost,agency cost,communication and time cost caused by geographical distance,which will have a variety of negative impacts on the innovation performance after M&A.However,with the rapid development of communication technology and transportation facilities,scholars dispute whether geographical distance still affects technology M&A activities.In order to clarify this controversy,this paper explores the impact of geographical distance on innovation performance of technology M&A in China.And whether there is a corresponding mechanism that can affect the geographical distance in technology M&A has become an urgent problem to be solved in both theory and reality.In view of this,based on geostrategic theory,information asymmetry theory and knowledge basis theory,this paper uses the technology M&A events of China’s high-tech listed companies during 2009-2019 as research samples and uses STATA14.0 to empirically test the relationship between geographical distance and innovation performance of technology M&A.And the heterogeneity of the relationship in the start-up/non-start-up group,manufacturing/non-manufacturing group,and with/without political affiliation;Secondly,it examines the primary moderating effect of technological overlap,and the secondary moderating effect of absorptive capacity and corporate governance on technological overlap.Based on between the periods before and after the merger and acquisition,this paper explores the mitigation technology mergers and acquisitions in the geographic distance constraint effect of the corresponding mechanism,is presented based on the weakening mechanism model of two phase,before and after mergers and acquisitions to help technology mergers and acquisitions party enterprise to solve the information asymmetry caused by geographic distance,transaction cost and agency cost hamper innovation output.The results show that :(1)geographical distance has a significant negative impact on Technology M&A innovation performance;In the grouping test,geographical distance has a significant negative impact on the innovation performance of new ventures,which is stronger than the negative impact of geographical distance on non-new ventures;Geographical distance has a significant negative impact on the innovation performance of both manufacturing and non-manufacturing enterprises,and the negative impact of geographical distance on manufacturing enterprises is stronger than the negative impact of geographical distance on non-manufacturing enterprises.Geographical distance has a significant negative impact on the Technology M&A innovation performance of the non-politically connected M&A,but has a negative but insignificant impact on the Technology M&A innovation performance of the politically connected M&A.(2)Technological overlap has a significant weakening effect on the negative relationship between geographical distance and technological M&A innovation performance;(3)absorptive capacity and corporate governance will strengthen the weakening effect of technological overlap on the negative relationship between geographical distance and technological M&A innovation performance.The research results are helpful to understand the important influence of geographical factors on technology M&A in China,provide corresponding ideas for Chinese enterprises to carry out technology M&A across geographical boundaries,and provide theoretical support and practical guidance for Chinese enterprises to deal with the impact of geographical distance in technology M&A.