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Strategic Orientation, R&D Partner Diversity And Innovation Performance

Posted on:2015-05-08Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1109330467450859Subject:Management Science and Engineering
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Since the R&D activities of pharmaceutical companies gain their difficulty with the expansion of the medicine fields, choosing R&D partners and enhancing external cooperation have been universal challenges for both Chinese and foreign pharmaceutical companies. There is a great gap between Chinese and foreign pharmaceutical industry as from2006to2010, United States declared4363innovative drugs and most of them were qualified when China only declared126with78qualified. Thus, it is necessary for Chinese pharmaceutical companies to learn from western companies and improve their innovation performance. During this process, how to choose partners has always been a key question for these firms carrying out R&D activities. In order to integrate internal with external resources effectively, implement new drug development and commercialize projects quickly, many pharmaceutical companies carry out several cooperation projects simultaneously in a period, which results in diversified partners. The newest research shows that companies with diversified R&D cooperation partners are usually closely associated with innovation. However, how does firms’ partners’ diversity affect their innovation performance in the process of carrying out R&D cooperation?Most of the previous literatures emphasized the impact of network structure (e.g. the effect of network locations on innovation performance of the focal firms) on innovation performance, and examined the diversity in the individual, team or dyadic level. However, recently, many scholars indicate that the contents of network should be paid more attention in the research field of social network. Responding to the call, this dissertation focuses on the contents of the network and its partner diversity. To be more specific, this dissertation examines network partners’ diversity in the network level, and takes R&D network context into account. To fill the research gap this dissertation focuses on the relationships among strategic orientation, R&D partners’ diversity and innovation performance. Specifically, we examine how does R&D partners’ diversity affect firm’s innovation performance, how does strategic orientation affect R&D partner diversity, and how does strategic orientation affect innovation performance through R&D partner diversity.This dissertation includes four studies. Firstly, by conducting a multiple case study of three pharmaceutical companies in China, we explore the impact of R&D partner diversity of the focal firms on innovation performance and the impact of strategic orientation on R&D partner diversity. The positive effect of R&D partner diversity on the innovation performance and the different effects of strategic orientation on R&D partner diversity have been found. From the resource-based view and social network view, the innovation performance could be promoted through cooperating with a variety of partners and gaining access to much more resources and tacit knowledge, which help firms to break through the original "mindset" and rethink the concept of a new product. What’s more, the positive impact of market orientation and technology orientation on R&D partner organizational diversity, the negative impact of market orientation on R&D partner geographical diversity, and the positive impact of technology orientation on R&D partner geographical diversity have also been found from the case study.Secondly, to examine the generalizability of the findings from our previous case study, this study uses a sample of218pharmaceutical companies in China to examine the relationships between R&D partner organizational diversity or R&D partner geographical diversity and innovation performance and how R&D cooperation experience moderates these relationships. The result indicates that both R&D partner organizational diversity and R&D partner geographical diversity have positive impact on innovation performance. The result also indicates that the R&D cooperation experience moderates positively the relationship between R&D partner organizational diversity and innovation performance, but the moderating effect of R&D cooperation experience on the relationship between R&D partner geographical diversity and innovation performance has not been verified.Thirdly, to verify the generalizability of the findings from previous case study, this study uses a sample of218pharmaceutical companies in China to examine the relationship between strategic orientation and R&D partner diversity. According to the results, market orientation exerts a positive impact on R&D partner organizational diversity and a negative impact on R&D partner geographical diversity, while technology orientation exerts a positive impact on R&D partner geographical diversity. However, the second hypothesis has not been verified in this study.Fourthly, to verify the generalizability of the findings from previous case study, this study uses a sample of218pharmaceutical companies in China and Bootstrap to examine the direct impact of strategic orientation on innovation performance, the indirect impacts of two kinds of strategic orientation on innovation performance mediated by R&D partners’organizational and geographical diversities. All the empirical results are consistent with our theoretical expectations (hypothesis2,3,4,5,6are supported) except the direct impact of market orientation on innovation performance. Based on these results we conclude that the mediation effect of R&D partner diversity between strategic orientation and innovation performance is verified.Through four in-depth studies, this dissertation builds a theoretical logic of strategic orientation, R&D partner diversity and innovation performance. Besides, this paper also has several important theoretical contributions.(1) Contribution to the literature of strategic orientation. This paper links the research field of strategy orientation to networking building behavior, and the impact of strategic orientation on R&D partner diversity has also been discussed.(2) Contribution to the literature of R&D network. On one hand, the previous researches of R&D network only stay in the qualitative description which is lack of empirical research. This paper explores the impact of R&D network on innovation performance. On the other hand, this paper responds to the call of scholars by concentrating on the contents of network, and the issue of partner diversity in R&D network especially.(3) Contribution to the literature of partner diversity. We identify two kinds of R&D partner diversity which are R&D partner organizational diversity and R&D partner geographical diversity. Also, the role of R&D cooperation experience has been introduced into the discussion between R&D partner diversity and innovation performance. Additionally, the antecedent variables of R&D partner diversity have also been identified in this paper.
Keywords/Search Tags:Strategic orientation, R&D partner diversity, R&D cooperationexperience, Innovation Catch-up, Innovation performance, Pharmaceutical Firms
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