The Influence Of KIBS-Client Interaction On Service Innovation Performance

With the development of global economy entering into knowledge-intensive service economy, more and more KIBS enterprises, directed by open innovation perspective, are increasingly to extend the innovation boundary to welcome customers joining in the process of innovation. This trend means that the innovation paradigm should be changed from focusing on service provider part into emphasizing provide-customer co-creation. Considering KIBS-Client interaction providing opportunities and challenges to integrate both parties'resources and competencies, building and maintaining appropriate KIBS-Client interaction becomes a core subject of present research.Hence, KIBS-Client interaction draws the attention of many academics and becomes a core concept in understanding the strategic behavior and performance of inter-connected firms. Unfortunately, though customer cooperation innovation has been studied for years, the construct and the taxonomy of KIBS-Client interaction are still unclear. Further, few researches have explored the mechanism of its influence on service innovation performance. Under this context, this dissertation integrates theories of customer cooperation innovation, inter-organizational links, service innovation, and knowledge integration, and tries to answer the core question of "How KIBS-Client interaction influences service innovation performance?" To meet this object, this thesis built taxonomy of KIBS-Client interaction, examined the effects of KIBS-Client interaction on service innovation performance, and investigated the mechanism within the black box between KIBS-Client interaction and service innovation performance.Drawing on the above research, some conclusions can be presented as follows:First, KIBS-Client interaction in service innovation has a positive effect on its service innovation performance. Co-organizing, co-decision-making, resource sharing and task coordination are all beneficial to the improvement of service innovation performance.Second, KIBS-Client interaction indirectly influences service innovation partly through the mediating role of knowledge integration. In detail, KIBS-Client co-organizing, co-decision-making, resource sharing and task coordination promotes service innovation performance through facilitating internal knowledge integration; KIBS-Client co-organizing has a negative impact on external knowledge integration; KIBS-Client co-decision-making and resource sharing enhances service innovation performance through acting positively on external knowledge integration.Process independence and project uncertainty play a moderating role between KIBS-Client interaction and knowledge integration. Concretely speaking, when process independence is higher, KIBS-Client co-organizing, co-decision-making and task coordination play a more important role on internal knowledge integration. When project uncertainty is higher, KIBS-Client co-organizing and task coordination have a more significant influence on external knowledge integration.By employing an integrative approach, this dissertation tries to make some innovation in the following fields:First, this dissertation refined the construct of KIBS-Client interaction and built taxonomy of KIBS-Client interaction, which integrated and extended research on the customer cooperation, inter-organizational link and service innovation, and put forward that KIBS-Client interaction can be divided into " structural dimension" and "process dimension" and further into four aspects of co-organizing, co-decision-making, resource sharing and task coordination.Secondly, this dissertation complemented the existing research on KIBS-Client cooperating innovation theories by building up linkages among theories of customer cooperation innovation, inter-organizatonal link, knowledge integration and service innovation. This dissertation put forward a theoretical framework of "KIBS-Client interaction---knowledge integration---service innovation performance", which uncovered the nature of KIBS-Client interaction and emphasized the mediating effect of knowledge integration.Thirdly, the dissertation interpreted the influence of KIBS-Client interaction on knowledge integration under different process independence and project uncertainty. The conclusions deepen the understanding of context of function of KIBS-Client interaction, and provide a new thought for KIBS enterprises effectively choosing an appropriate KIBS-Client interaction pattern in different situations...