A Study On Corporate Social Capital, Organizational Learning And Technological Innovation Performance

In the background of knowledge economy, innovation and organizational learning is essential. In the development environment of dynamic competition, a large number of enterprises begin to profoundly understand that enterprises should not only formulate corresponding competitive strategy according to their own core knowledge and ability, but also continue the organizational learning, create their own competitive advantage through organizational learning. Organizational learning ability has begun to formulate one of the most important core competencies, and is the key for organizations to survive and develop.Quite a number of studies have shown that social capital is a key factor that affects the performance of enterprise (including the technological innovation performance). Many enterprises take their efforts to build social capital, and whether the social capital affects the technological innovation performance of enterprises and how it affect the technological innovation performance of enterprises has attract many scholars. Current research has confirmed that external relations of high-tech enterprises are essential for the enterprises to acquire knowledge and learning, thus affect the performance of enterprises. However, research about internal and external social capital and how they affect the different types of enterprise learning and technological innovation performance of enterprises are few. In recent years, throughout the country established high-tech industrial park, through their own technical research and development, and through the introduction of preferential policies to encourage foreign investment to establish bases in the industrial park for research and development, China's technological innovations have made tremendous progress. This study focused on the organizational learning of high-tech enterprises, the study could be to some extent make-up for these shortcomings of above research. Investigating the status quo of social capital, organizational learning of China's high-tech enterprises, and whether the social capital and organizational learning affect the technological innovation performance, and how the social capital and organizational learning affect the technological innovation performance of China's high-tech enterprises have become the serious problems to be solved during the practice of China's enterprises, and are the fundamentals of theory and technology infrastructure of business strategy, so the conclusions have important theoretical and practical significance.This study used a combination of methods of normative research and empirical research, following the research procedure of "reading the literature and interviews -proposing hypothetical - the formation of a questionnaire and survey data - empirical analysis (to confirm or falsifications hypotheses) - the formation of the conclusions", including two areas (1) Combining the theme of this study and on the basis of the research of corresponding literature, this paper establishes the theoretical framework and proposing a series of hypotheses to be tested by logical reasoning and theoretical analysis. (2) Designing an appropriate questionnaire based on the conclusion of previous studies. This study obtains the first-hand information for data analysis by way of questionnaire survey, during the process of data analysis, we test the validity and reliability firstly; then used confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression analysis and other analytical methods to test the theoretical framework and the corresponding hypotheses of this article.Useing the high-tech enterprises in Shandong as the research object, based on the providing and testing of the measurement of corporate social capital dimensions, this paper studied the relationship of corporate social capital, organizational learning and technological innovation performance in a comprehensive and systematic way. Comprehensively using a series of research methodology such as modeling and statistics and SPSS statistical tools, this paper made the relationship of corporate social capital and organizational learning and technological innovation performance clear. The research found that three dimensions (structural dimension, relational dimension and cognitive dimension) of corporate social capital had different impact on the exploiting learning and exploration learning of enterprises, and the exploiting learning and exploration learning of enterprises had different impact on the technological innovation performance of enterprises, and corporate social capital will also affect the technological innovation performance in a different way. (1) Structural dimensions of corporate social capital (including the power, the stability of link, intra-industry manager ties and extra-industry manager ties) have different impact on exploiting learning and exploration learning. Power is positively related to both exploitative and exploratory learning. The stability of link is positively related to both exploitative and exploratory learning. Intra-industry manager ties positively related to both exploitative and exploratory learning. Extra-industry manager ties help enterprises gain exposure to diverse information and perspectives from outside their domain of knowledge, the diverse information may interfere with abilities to solidify or reinforce dominant industry perspectives, thus hinder exploitative learning. (2) Relational dimensions of corporate social capital (including trust and obligations and expectations) have different impact on exploiting learning and exploration learning. Trust promoted exploiting learning, but did not promote exploration learning. About obligations and expectations, the commitment and responsibility of business members engaging in an activity can promote the exploiting learning, but not obvious to promote exploration learning. (3) Cognitive dimension of corporate social capital (including consistency and a common vision) have a positive or neutral relationship on organizational learning. Consistency improved the utilization of exploiting learning through the promotion of exchange and the reorganization of resources, but not enough to affect the consistency of enterprises to exploration learning. Common vision promoted the exploration learning. Because of a common vision, we can reduce the uncertainty of actions of other members, so that we can make enterprises have more opportunities in new areas to constructive exploration. (4) The structural dimension, the relational dimension and the cognitive dimension of corporate social capital all have a positive impact on technological innovation performance. This shows that corporate social capital will help enterprises to improve technological innovation performance in three areas. (5)This paper found that exploiting learning and technological innovation performance was the U-shaped relationship, rather than inverted U-shaped relationship. The relationship between exploration learning and technological innovation performance is positive, along with the increase of exploration learning of enterprises, the extent of the increase in enterprise technological innovation increased more and more rapidly. The exploiting learning and exploration learning will be an increasing number of returns of their technological innovation performance in respectively, which shows that by exploiting learning and exploration learning, high-tech enterprises becomes more efficient in the learning process, and thereby have a better technological innovation performance. (6) If the enterprise have exploiting learning and exploration learning at the same time, and this combination of two learning process more closely, it should be a negative impact on technological innovation performance. If the level of exploiting learning is lower, raising the level of exploration learning can improve the technological innovation performance of enterprises. However, if the level of exploration learning is higher, improve the exploiting learning will decrease the technical innovation performance of enterprise.As the new vision of theoretical studies of technological innovation, the study of corporate social capital has a long history both at home and abroad, but the study integrating corporate social capital, organizational learning and technological innovation performance as a combination is very rare at present. On the basis of carding and inheritance in the existing research results, this study has three greater innovations as follows (1) Proposing the conceptual model of corporate social capital, organizational learning and technological innovation performance. On the basis of literature review of the study of corporate social capital, organizational learning, technological innovation performance, and their relationship, this paper build conceptual model of corporate social capital affecting the exploration learning and exploiting learning, and the exploration learning and exploiting learning affecting technological innovation performance, and corresponding theoretical hypotheses. (2) Distinguishing the different contributions of organizational learning modes on technological innovation performance. Most of previous studies that analyze the different impact on the technological innovation performance of organizational learning used a static perspective by an independent analysis of the impact of organizational learning on technical innovation performance. However, the various organizational learning modes may have mutual influence; completely removing all kinds of interactions between organizational learning is very difficult to explain on a comprehensive study on the impact of technological innovation performance of the actual situation. For this reason, this research on the different impact of organizational learning on technological innovation performance explored a integration to make up for the shortcomings of previous studies. (3) Previous studies deeply research the process of organizational learning, affecting path on knowledge transfer by organizational learning, and organizational learning affecting corporate technological innovation, explain why organizational learning promote technological innovation and enhance competitive advantage, but have been ignored the research of the impact on organizational learning by corporate social capital. In fact, the most important reason that affects organizational learning is corporate social capital. Use high-tech enterprises in Shandong Province as sample, this study explains how the various dimensions of corporate social capital affect enterprise technological innovation performance through the organizational learning in a systematic way, thus comes to the implementation of the integration of research on social capital, organizational learning and technological innovative, expands the research areas of organizational learning and expands the organizational learning theory.Corporate social capital is still at the initial stage in this field of research, the current study of corporate social capital mostly focuses on theoretical analysis, the quantitative research is few, the empirical research of the relationship between corporate social capital and technological innovation performance are more rarely seen. How to enhance the ability of technological innovation by building corporate social capital has become more concerned both in the academic and business topics. In particular, the traditional innovation has started moving to the direction of the opening, cooperation, network and dynamic integration. Comprehensively and systematically studying of the technological innovation performance of enterprises from the perspective of social capital theory is the attempt of this paper. This paper found that investing in internal and external social capital would help enterprises to improve technological innovation performance. In order to facilitate enterprises to exploration learning and exploiting learning, high-tech enterprises should pay special attention to creating an atmosphere conducive to organizational learning. In addition, the enterprises should strive to establish a corporate culture and internal and external linkages, including the industry both inside and outside the enterprise in order to promote the enterprises to increase their existing knowledge and explore new areas of knowledge. Finally, it should be adopted to allow enterprises to enhance social interaction, sharing a common vision and participation in decision-making enterprises, so that the members of enterprises can improve the level of mutual trust, promote the consistency of views and ideas. High-tech enterprises should realize the importance of exploration learning and exploiting learning. In order to be able to survive and have access to the development, enterprises should consciously learn to promote the balance of exploration learning and exploiting learning. If a high-tech enterprise's exploiting learning level is low, the enterprises should take measures to exploration learning in order to enable enterprises to receive higher levels of technological innovation performance. On the contrary, when a high-tech enterprise's exploration learning and exploiting learning level are both high, this might not be conducive to organizational learning for enterprises to upgrade their technological innovation performance, this is because the exploration learning and exploiting learning have inherent differences, if the exploration learning and exploiting learning are more than a certain limits, enterprises will not be able to carry out effective business management. Therefore it is necessary for the enterprises to keep the balance of two types of organizational learning.