The Relationship Research Among SMEs’ Heterogeneous Knowledge Network, Organizational Learning And Technological Capability

Knowledge network and organizational learning have been considered to be the keyfactors of enterprise’s technological capability. In the background of the age of openinnovation, the small, medium and micro enterprises should pay more attention on externalknowledge acquisition, and improve the efficiency of using external knowledge by buildingthe learning organization. Most research investigate that the knowledge network plays animportant role on improving technological capability through the perspective of networkstructure. At the same time, these researches point out that organizational learning is thecritical mechanism which could transform the knowledge into the capability. However, basedto the knowledge content, how the different types of knowledge which could have differentvalues to the enterprises can influence the technological capability, the existing research havenot given adequate “direct” evidence. This provided a new perspective of analyzingknowledge network for other researchers.Based on the existing research, this dissertation took a software park in Tianhe Region ofGuangzhou city as the research sample, using social network analysis method to verificationthe existence of enterprises’ heterogeneous knowledge network. Then, according to thecorrelative theories, a conceptual framework of the relationship among the knowledgenetwork, organizational learning and technical ability was constructed. Besides, thisdissertation makes an empirical study by taking the small, medium and micro enterprises ofShunde Region located in Guangdong Province as the research object. The results showed:firstly, the knowledge network of the industrial clusters has multidimensional characteristics,which can be divided into three kinds of knowledge subnetwork in detail: technical,management and marketing knowledge subnetwork. That means every type of knowledgecorresponds to a specific knowledge network with different structural features. Theenterprises exchanged different types of knowledge with each other in different way in theseknowledge networks. Secondly, when the small, medium and micro enterprises chooseexploitative learning as their main way of learning, all the heterogeneous knowledgenetworks’(including technical, management and marketing knowledge network) direct,positive effect on enterprises’ technological capability has not been confirmed in this study. But these three kinds of knowledge network have an indirect, positive effect on theenterprises’ technical ability through the exploitative learning’s mediating effect. Thirdly,when the small, medium and micro enterprises choose exploratory learning as their main wayof learning, the exploratory learning also has a mediating effect on the relationship betweenheterogeneous knowledge network and technical ability. To say more specifically, technicalknowledge network has an effect on enterprise’s technical ability, the exploratory learningplays an mediating role partly between them. But marketing knowledge network has an effecton enterprise’s technical ability through the exploratory learning’ fully mediating effect.The theories and empirical study of this dissertation have some academic contributionson enriching and improving the theory of knowledge network, organizational learning andtechnical ability. Especially under the current macroeconomic environment, the conclusion ofthis paper provides some guidances of improving enterprise’s technical ability practices,especially for the small, medium and micro enterprises. First of all, an enterprise shouldrealized what kind of knowledge it needs and what the type of organizational learning it fits,and build its knowledge network based on the specific knowledge. The government ought tothink systematically about the supporting policys for the small, medium and micro enterprises.And the government could conduct these enterprises to integrate each type of knowledgenetwork positively by building all kinds of platforms.