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Entrepreneurs' Social Network, The Dual Innovation And Technology Innovation Performance

Posted on:2014-01-20Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:J J WuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1229330395492333Subject:Business management
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During China’s economic transition period, high technology private enterprise has been an important part of Chinese national economy and an important growth source of regional economic development. The common consensus was that the private economy has become a key player for the entire industry restructuring and for the transformation of economic development mode. But the achievements of these private enterprises are only obtained through favorable policies and imperfect public service system. It is very difficult to explain that private high-tech enterprises win competitive advantages in the closed innovation mode. Some existing facts show that the high innovation performances of those private enterprises come from the extensive social exchanges and connections between the entrepreneurs and relevant individuals and parties outside the enterprises; hence these enterprises change from their original role as passive value provider to the active value creator. Therefore, the lack of appropriate role of the government departments and other public organizations results in the relative scarce standardized social resources based on the universal trust and social network, which as the result directly limits the rapid development of the high-tech private enterprises and forces the entrepreneurs resort to entrepreneurs non-standard social resources based on special trust and connection network.Unfortunately, despite a wide concern for the entrepreneurs’social network in China and the emerging research and study for the network success hypothesis theory, the domestic scholars have outlined the characteristics of the entrepreneurs’social network and the outputted competitiveness brought by these characteristics; but these researches rarely focus on the empirical study about the mechanism and role of entrepreneurs’social network influences on technological innovation performance, also there are still some differences on the research regarding the actual effect of entrepreneurs’social network.This research paper is developed based one some domestic private high technology enterprises furnished with innovation networks with focuses on the issue relating to"How can the entrepreneurs build a proper social network model to improve technological innovation performance"; In order to understand the inner mechanism, based on the theory of exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, this research will specify the intermediate effect of the organizational ambidexterity for the relationships between entrepreneurs’social network and technological innovation performance upgrading and the entrepreneurs are assumed such roles as the natural starting point of the enterprise as well as the main learning agent to realize technological innovation performance upgrading to build a theoretical framework of "entrepreneur social network structure-organizational ambidexterity-technological innovation performance"; The research will closely follow the analysis logic of "structur-action-performance" to have progressively analysis for the following four closely logic-interrelated sub-studies:①What is composed of entrepreneurs’ social network structure under the perspective of social resources.②What is the entrepreneurs’social network influence on the technological innovation performance?〥oes the organizational ambidexterity has any positive impact on technological innovation performance.④Does the organizational ambidexterity has any intermediate role? For purpose of bring a complete solution to all above issues, this paper will specify the following:(1) Literature review and theoretical development. Through systematically analysis of existing literatures on Social capital theory, social network theory and technological innovation theory etc and bringing out the theory outlines relating to this study, this paper analyzes and generalizes the connotation of entrepreneurs’social network and points out four structure characteristics including upper reachability, breath of network, universality, heterogeneity and relationship strength and social network and personal network in terms of denotation; The paper also points out that the entrepreneurs’social network is such a relation between the entrepreneurs and members of enterprise external network; All such resources contained in this relations such as knowledge and skills provide the action opportunity for the enterprise to achieve the technological innovation performance.(2) Exploratory case studies and the proposing of theoretical framework. After interviews with the entrepreneurs of a total of eleven high-tech enterprises, this paper selects4of them to do exploratory case study. Through discussions within and between cases, this paper reveals the influence of enterprise social network characteristics on organizational ambidexterity innovation behavior, the general relationship between the organizational ambidexterity innovation and technological innovation performance and as a result a preliminary research framework for the relationship between the entrepreneurs’social network and technological innovation performance is finally developed, which provides practical ideas for the follow-up related researches.(3) Theoretical model and empirical research of the relationship between the organizational ambidexterity innovation and technological innovation performance. Based on exploratory case study, we further neatened theoretical literature related to the research framework and established the concept model of the impact of entrepreneurs’social network on technological innovation performance, the function mechanism and the corresponding detailed assumptions of the influences of entrepreneurs’social network on technological innovation performance. And through interviewing with151entrepreneurs by means of questionnaires, descriptive statistical analysis, factor analysis, reliability and validity test and related multiple regression analysis and other quantitative statistical methods, this paper performs empirical research for the model and hypothesis and finally the relevant theories for the correlation between the between entrepreneurs’social network and enterprise technological innovation performance are obtained.Through above research work, this paper finally reaches the following conclusions:(1) The statistical study for the data of151entrepreneurs found that the assumptions of entrepreneurs’social network characteristics and technological innovation performance actually exist; In particular, the entrepreneurs can have scarce resources within the hierarch system through certain connections with the staffs of government departments at all levels for purpose of helping the enterprise obtain higher technological innovation performance; The diversity of the embedded resources of Entrepreneurs’social network resources has positive influence on technological innovation performance and there is an inversed U-shaped relationship between technological innovation performance and the following factors as exchange time and frequency and emotional intensity between the entrepreneurs and network members.(2) The organizational ambidexterity has a positive impact on technological innovation performance. The positive impact of exploitative innovation shows that the enterprise can further reveal the value of customers of the target market and can utilize based on the theory of leverage the existing enterprise innovation resources and homogeneity knowledge resources outside the organization and hence can achieve corresponding innovation in the existing technology field. The positive impact of exploratory innovation on technological innovation performance also mainly reflects that the enterprise can produce new products through re-integration of non-redundant knowledge, skills and other resources to promote technological innovation performance.(3) The entrepreneur’s social network may have its impact on the technological innovation performance through its impact on organizational ambidexterity. According to the summarization of above two sub-studies and based on the social network theory and technological innovation theory etc, a theoretical logic of "entrepreneur social network structure-organizational ambidexterity-technological innovation performance" is finally developed and verified through the use of many evidences; The research shows:①Upper reachability of network can affect technological innovation performance through exploitative Innovation, but with less significant mediating effect of exploratory innovation;②Breath of network has a positive impact on organizational ambidexterity and so positively affects technological innovation performance;③eterogeneity of network has a positive impact on exploratory innovation and hence on the technological innovation performance but with less significant mediating effect of exploitative innovation;④Strength of network tie has a positive impact on exploitative innovation and hence on technological innovation performance but with less significant mediating effect of exploratory innovation.Compared with the existing research achievements, this research contributes to the innovation and development mainly in the following areas:(1) Innovation in research logic. A new research logic of "entrepreneur social network structure-rganizational ambidexterity-technological innovation performance" is developed in this paper. In detail, we propose①The finding of enterprise innovation source and effective innovation activities are the key for the transformation and upgrading of an high-tech enterprise;②Technological innovation performance should be based on the organizational ambidexterity;③Organizational ambidexterity relies on the access to knowledge, skills and other resources of entrepreneur’s social network.(2) Innovation in key constructs. There are three main concepts for above-mentioned logic constructs:①The concept of the role of entrepreneurs’ social network on upgrading of technological innovation performance;②The concept of the role of entrepreneurs’ social network on both exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation;③The concept of the role of the mediating effect of organizational ambidexterity on the relations between entrepreneurs’ social network and the upgrading of technological innovation performance; All these three concepts provides the feasibility for the research of the main logic structures.(3) Innovation in access points. The access points to make the above-mentioned three key concepts possible includes a transformation from "Enterprise innovation based on innovation network" to "Social network based on relationship between enterprises", transformation from" Providing economic rent to the enterprise through open innovation "to "The role of entrepreneur as a critical learning agent " and transformation from "The key social role of the entrepreneur " to "The micro mechanism for revealing the role of entrepreneurs’ social network resources on technological innovation performance".(4) Innovation in research conclusions. This paper reaches some innovative conclusions, among which, what is worth mentioning is that the entrepreneurs non-market behavior-upper reachability of the social network has a positive impact on enterprise technological innovation performance. This conclusion not only responds to the suggestions of the related studies that the output of entrepreneur’s political social resources is not just limited to the enterprise value and financial performance, but also expands the output of entrepreneurs political social resources to the level of enterprise technological innovation performance, which on the one hand, enrich the research of entrepreneurs political strategic discussion field, on the other hand, research the effect of entrepreneur’s political social resources on the promotion of enterprise technological innovation from the perspective of the system, and as the result provides a new angle of view to explore the research related to technological innovation.
Keywords/Search Tags:Entrepreneurs’ Social Networks, Exploratory Innovation, ExploitativeInnovation, Technological innovation performance, High-tech Enterprise
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