Inter-organizational Linkage, Resource Management And Innovation Performance

Technological innovation is the soul of enterprises for their survival and development, which has significant impacts on firms’performance and long-term competitive advantage. The evolution of global competition and industrial technologies has deeply changed the resource base of firms for building core capabilities and acquiring competitive advantages. Inter-organizational strategic network relationships are becoming more and more important to key innovation. On the other hand, the development of Regional Innovation Network (RIN) has shaped resource acquisition for innovation. Industry agglomeration constructs a knowledge network in a geographical area. For the firms in pursuit of excellence, the RIN and inter-organizational collaborative network have changed the competition borders. Internal resource is not enough to dealing with market competition, and the resource in the collaborative network has become vital to competitive advantage. The ability of combining and managing resource becomes a vital condition to win competitive advantage. Therefore, a lot of academic researchers pay attention to RIN, Resource Management and Inter-organizational Strategic Collaboration. However, little literature have systematically illustrated the mechanism among inter-organizational linkage, resource management and innovation performance. Further, most researches on RIN are based on the theories of industrial economy, and very little literature discusses RIN from a micro enterprise’s view.This dissertation tries to answer the question of "the relationships among inter-organizational collaboration, risk management and SME’s innovation performance in RIN", integrating the theories of collaboration network, resource-based view and RIN. To find out some reasonable conclusions, this thesis formulates a conceptual framework, examining the mechanisms and effects of inter-organizational collaboration and resource management on SME’s innovation performance within a RIN context. This research is conducted through the following stages:(1) Introduction and literature review. According to identified research questions, this dissertation reviews the literature in technological innovation, inter-organizational network, resource-based view and RIN. Through literature review, the author understands the state-of-art of the relevant researches and finds out some unexplored area in existing literature.(2) Explorative case study. Based on field researches on some innovative enterprises in Yangtze River Delta, the author conducts2explorative case studies to discuss the logic relationships among inter-organizational collaboration, resource management and innovation performance under a RIN context, putting forward the initial conceptual framework for the following quantitative research. The2case firms are from different industries, and operate in different business scale.(3) Research model and empirical study. The author formulates a complete conceptual model based on in-depth theoretical analysis and cased study, and proposes some hypotheses. By a questionnaire survey based on a sample of223firms within RINs in Yangtze River Delta area, this thesis verifies the effects of inter-organizational collaboration and resource management on innovation performance, and discusses the moderating effects of environmental factors within RIN, using statistical analysis tools.After the above discussion, some conclusions can be reached:(1) From a business view, the recognition of innovation incentive policies and industrial atmosphere within RIN by different types of enterprises vary significantly. The research result shows although most existing literature believe from a macro level the incentive policies and industrial atmosphere can prompt the innovation capabilities in a geographic area, the recognition by firms of incentive policies and industrial atmosphere differs from micro view. In other words, located in a RIN may not positively increase the innovation intention of a firm.(2) Basically, inter-organizational linkage and resource management have positive impact on innovation performance, and resource management has mediating effects on the relationship between inter-organizational collaboration and innovation performance. The embedded linkages and interaction intensity can leverage innovation performance through resource structuring, resource bundling and resource leveraging in the innovation network.(3) To some degree, the environmental factors in RIN can moderate the influence of resource management on innovation performance. The perception on the environmental factors by different type of enterprises varies significantly. As a consequence, the intention and motive of allocating external and internal resource for innovation will be influenced by the perception on RIN, which will moderate the mechanism and the influencing path between resource management and innovation performance.(4) Finally, the author draws some conclusions and proposes some possible future research directions in the final chapter.