| This dissertation explores the sources of Chinese local firms' competitive advantages from the theoretical perspective of organizational search, and proposes that boundary-spanning search is an important way to attain heterogeneous knowledge. By the empirical support of survey data on 187 Chinese local firms, the positive relationship between boundary-spanning search and firm performance, as well as the mediating role of innovation, is proved, deepening and extending our existing understanding of organizational search, innovation and competitive advantage.First of all, building on existing studies, this dissertation deepens and expands the conceptual framework of boundary-spanning search by distinguishing boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge and boundary-spanning search of market knowledge, and by distinguishing cognitive dimension of boundary-spanning search and geographical dimension of boundary-spanning search. The different contributions made by those types and dimensions of boundary-spanning search to firm performance are further revealed. The empirical results confirmed that the cognitive boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge, the geographical boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge, the cognitive boundary-spanning search of market knowledge, the geographical boundary-spanning search of market knowledge all have significant positive impacts on firm performance. The findings also exhibit that, the geographical boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge has a greater positive effect on firm performance than the cognitive boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge, while the geographical boundary-spanning search of market knowledge has a less positive effect on firm performance than the cognitive boundary-spanning search of market knowledge.Secondly, this dissertation further deepens the understanding of the relationship between boundary-spanning search and firm performance by exemplifying the mediating role of innovation, and theoretically builds a "boundary-spanning search - innovation - firm performance" model: boundary-spanning search advance the firm's innovation by changing the quantity and quality of its own heterogeneous knowledge elements, thereby promoting the formation of competitive advantage. Different from extant research, this study simultaneously took into account the technological innovation and business model innovation to open out the "boundary-spanning search - firm performance" link. Empirical results confirmed the mediating role of technological innovation and business model innovation within the process that boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge and boundary-spanning search of market knowledge make impact on firm performance. Moreover, this empirical study finds that in STI-mode industries, technological innovation makes a greater contribution to firm performance than business model innovation, which has a positive role in promoting technological innovation. In DUI-mode industries, business model innovation makes a greater contribution to firm performance than technological innovation, which has a positive role in promoting business model innovation. Furthermore, demand uncertainty plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between technological innovation and firm performance in DUI-mode industries.Thirdly, this dissertation explores the antecedents of boundary-spanning search of Chinese local firms, and identifies five important factors in both the industry level and the firm level: market growth, value chain divisibility, market openness, absorptive capacity and slack resources. Empirical results show that, both the cognitive boundary-spanning search and the geographical boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge are affected by absorptive capacity, the cognitive boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge is influenced by market growth, and the geographical boundary-spanning search of technological knowledge is affected by value chain divisibility and slack resources. Both the cognitive boundary-spanning search and geographical boundary-spanning search of market knowledge are positively influenced by value chain divisibility, absorptive capacity and slack resources. Besides, cognitive boundary-spanning search of market knowledge is negatively influenced by the degree of market opening.
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