A Study On The Technological Catch-up Models Of Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises

Unbalance of the development of global economy as well as science and technology makes technological catching-up and technological leap frogging a topic that has long been concerned.The rise of Asianenterprisesin the 20 th centuryfrom Japan,South Korea,Taiwan and Hong Kong verified the Late-developing Advantage Theory(Gerschenkron,1962).With the institutional reform and opening up,Chinese enterprises have achievedeffective catching-up in technology and market within the past more than 30 years.However,the process and trace of Chinese enterprises catching-up was not completely in accordance with Gershenkron's Late-developing Advantage Theory.Moreover,extant Resources Based View and Enterprise Capability Theory cannot explain the phenomena of Chinese enterprises catching-up well.Specifically,different from latecomer enterprises in early western developed countries and emerging industrial countries,Chinese enterprises carry out technological catching-up under the special“Chinese context”.On the one hand,the "Chinese context" means diverse technological system,multi-level market and special transition economy.On the other hand,there are many interactions between market and non-market institutional change and enterprise behaviors in transitional economic background.Extant studies demonstrated it is widely accepted the importance of obscuring competitive advantage through improving technological capability(distinctive resource).However,under the late-comer developing context,there is deficiency in case and empirical studies which focus on how the enterprise technological capabilities affect its technological catching-up pattern,especially the fit between technological capabilities and technological environment and how the fit relationship affects the technological catching-up performance.The paper will conduct the research on how the fit relationship between enterprises technological capabilities and technological environment improves the technological catching-up technological catching-up performance based on Chinese manufacturing enterprises in global manufacturing network.The paper establishes a theoretical framework of the relationship between technological capabilities,technological environment and technological catching-up performance.It explores the three relative research questions as follows:(1)the effect of the fit between enterprise technological capabilities and technological environment on catching-up performance.(2)How this mechanisms work indifferent network organizations.(3)How theenterprise technological capabilities and dynamic technological environment evolve mutually?This paper illustrates the three research questions above through the three studies as follows:(1)Study1 : it proposes a conceptual model of the effect of the fit between enterprise technological capabilities and technological environment on catching-up performance as well as corresponding hypotheses.With the questionnaires from 204 Chinese manufacturing enterprises,an empirical study was conducted by exploring factor analysis,confirmatory factor analysis and multivariate regression analysis.The conceptual model was finally established.(2)Study 2: based on study 1,centralization of network and strength of network relationship are introduced to explore the mechanism of the effect of the fit between enterprise technological capabilities and technological environment on catching-up performance in different contexts.With the questionnaires from 204 Chinese manufacturing enterprises,exploring factor analysis,confirmatory factor analysis and multivariate regression analysis are applied to verify and revise the moderating effect.(3)Study 3: because technological catch-up is an evolving process with the development of industry and enterprise technological capabilities,study 3 researches on the mutual evolving process of enterprise technological capabilities,technological environment and the embedded enterprise network with the vertical case study based on the mechanism model above.This paper makes conclusions as follows:(1)The modularity capability and integrated innovative capability exert a positive effect on the technological catching-up performance of manufacturing latecomer enterprises.(2)The fit between enterprise technological capability and technological environment have an effect on enterprise catching-up performance.Specifically,the good fit of modularity capability and innovative exclusion has a positive effect on latecomer enterprise catching-up performance.The good fit of integrated innovative capability and innovative exclusion has a positive effect on technological catching-up performance.(3)Centralization of network and strength of network relationship have moderating effects on the relationship between the fit of enterprises technological capability and technological environment and the technological catching-up performance.Specifically,centralization of network has a positive moderating effect on the fit between integrated innovative capability andtechnology cumulativeness.Strength of network relationship has a negative moderating effect on the fit between integrated innovative capability and technology cumulativeness.This paper develops and deepens the extant researches in three aspects as follows:(1)Analyze the intrinsic process of enterprise technological capability affecting the enterprise technological catching-up performance.Latecomer enterprise technological capabilities are theoretically divided into modularization capability and integrated innovative capability.An empirical study is conducted to verify the effect of the fit between modularization capability and technological environment on latecomer enterprise catching-up performance as well as the effect of the fit between integrated innovative capability and technological environment on latecomer enterprise catching-up performance.(2)Explore and empirically verify the moderating effect of enterprise network on the relationship between the fit of enterprise technological capability and technological environment and latecomer enterprise catching-up performance.(3)Analyze the evolving process and the path of the fit between enterprise technological capability and technological environment based on case study.Extract three catching-up patterns for Chinese latecomer enterprises.These patterns are valuable for enterprise to construct proper technological catching-up model according with different outer technological environment traits and inner technological capability.