Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Organizational Absorptive Capacity And Technological Innovation

With the rapid development of the knowledge economy and economic globalization comesthe increasing value of external knowledge absorption for firm’s technological innovation. In thereality of management practices, many enterprises occupy dominant positions in the marketbecause of effective utilization of external knowledge. The success or failure of many well-knownenterprises is closely related to the absorption of external knowledge and information. Based ondynamic capability theory, Zahra and George (2002) pointed out that the absorptive capacity is akind of dynamic capability embedded in series of routines and processes, through which the firmcan acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit external knowledge. Zahra and George (2002)discrimated potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity based on the fourdimensions. Along the development of the theory of absorptive capacity, this paper respones tothe gap in the existing research and the development direction of theory pointed out by scholarsand helps to explain the complex relationship between absorptive capacity and technologicalinnovation, deepening our understanding about the theory of absorptive capacity andtechnological innovation, as well as the understanding about development mechanism ofsustainable competitive advantage.The paper conducts an in-depth discussion on absorptive capacity and technologicalinnovations, analyzing relationship between subsets of absorptive capacity and different kinds oftechnological innovations (radical technological innovation and incremental technologicalinnovation).The main research questions of this study are as follows, the direct effects of thesubsets of absorptive capacity on the two kinds of technological innovations, the moderatingimpact of institutional environment and type of external knowledge (industrial externalknowledge and scientific external knowledge), and the complementary effect of the two subsetsof absorptive capacity on the two types of technological innovations.This study follows the method of theoretical deduction and empirical analysis and discussesthe above problems deeply. This paper mainly does the following aspects of jobs.(1) Constructing the conceptual model and theoretical analysis framework throughtheoretical deduction and practice observation.This paper makes a systematic carding about absorptive capacity and technological innovation, discriminating the inner logic and relationship between the concepts of absorptivecapacity, technological innovations, institutional environment and type of external knowledge.Based on the grasping of theory and the observation of enterprises, this study constructs acomprehensive analysis framework about absorptive capacity and technological innovation.(2) Getting the details about absorptive capacity, technological innovation and other relatedconcepts through questionnaire.During the researching period, the author did deep investigation in some organizations inBeijing, Shanghai, Changchun and some other cities through questionnaire under the guidance ofthe tutor. Altogether this paper collected228valid questionnaires for empirical studies. Thesample of228enterprises has widely representation and can meet the need of empirical research.(3) Doing empirical test for conceptual model and hypotheses through statistical method.After the large scale data collection, this paper use SPSS16.0statistical analysis software fordata and hypothesis analyzing. This research mainly gets the following conclusions.Firstly, potential absorptive capacity only affects radical technological innovationsignificantly and positively, and realized absorptive capacity has significant effects on twodifferent technological innovations. Secondly, on the whole, the effect of absorptive capacity ontechnological innovations is more significant under better institutional environment.Thirdly,scientific external knowledge moderate positively the relationship between absorptive capacityand radical technological innovation, and industrial external knowledge moderate positively therelationship between absorptive capacity and incremantal technological innovation. Fourthly,complementarity between subsets of absorptive capability has positive effect on radicaltechnological innovation, but not on incremental technological innovation.The possible theoretical innovation points are reflected through the following aspects.Thispaper conducts research on the interactive relationship between subsets of absorptive capacity andtechnological innovation, analyzing the complementary effect of the two subsets of absorptivecapacity on the two types of technological innovations. In addition, the discussion about themoderating effects of institutional environmant and type of external knowledge also has value oftheoretical innovation.