Research On The Relationship Between Network Embedding And Breakthrough Innovation Performance: The Impact Of Innovation Legitimacy And Access To Innovative Resources

In recent years,under the context of developing an innovative country in China,radical innovation receives an increasing concern compared to incremental innovation,and is becoming a critical approach dealing with the fierce market competition and promoting national development.While incremental innovation is featured as capability improvement type of innovation,which is based on current knowledge and resources,radical innovation originated from Schumpeter's opinion of "creative destruction",which means conducting significant improvements to current products and services in aspects of product,procedure or business model.It usually induces fundamental transformations,such as changing existing industries and markets,and emerging new ones.The continuous appearance of new technologies,markets,policies and regulations along with the development of China's economic transition,industrial updates and emerging industries,and the significant changes in customers'consumption attitudes and behaviors,all these create opportunities for conducting radical innovation within enterprises,For instance,resulting in the emergence of new internet technology enterprises initiating commercial ecological system innovation depending on dominant e-commerce platform,retailer enterprises entering into e-commerce launching 020 business model innovation,and hi-tech enterprises putting forward new products based on its own technological breakthroughs.Due to an enterprise's limited innovation capability and resources,it needs integration of resources from within and outside organization,and interactions with other organizations in order to improve its innovation capability and innovation performance.This is especially the case for radical innovation enterprises.Under the competitive network environment,radical innovation may have two main problems during its implementation.First,it may encounter the problem of innovation legitimacy identity,as it may be restricted by and thus cause conflicts with social institution structure and environment.The success of innovation depends on the establishment of institution legitimacy.Innovation legitimacy is thus an important factor to radical innovation performance.Second,because of its heavy investment,uncertainties and high risks,resources within one particular enterprise may not meet the requirements for radical innovation.Enterprises must and thereby eager to search for information,knowledge and funds needed for innovation through external network embeddedness.It was found from this review that there exist numerous theoretical and empirical researches on entrepreneurship and innovation in perspectives of social network or social capital.Some researches based on resource-based theory analyzed the significant influence of innovative resources on enterprise innovation.Some others focused on the importance of organizational legitimacy on start-up enterprises or its growth and development stages.In summary,few analyses in multi-theoretical integration perspective were found on enterprise innovation.It also lacks in-depth theoretical analysis and empirical research on the relationship between network embeddedness and radical innovation,as well as the influence mechanism of legitimacy on radical innovation in perspective of innovation legitimacy.Based on these findings,this paper establishes an integrated model combining network,institution and resource-based theories,and in-depth analyzes the impact of network embeddedness on innovation performance by conducting theoretical analysis,investigation,interviews and questionnaire survey.Differing from previous studies,this paper uses innovation legitimacy and innovation resources as two intermediaries,and establishes the theoretical framework of "network embeddedness--innovation legitimacy and innovation resource acquisition--radical innovation performance"according to the logic of "structure—conduct--performance",exploring the following three logically closely-related sub-studies step by step:?What is composed of enterprises embedded network?What is network embeddedness influence on the enterprises innovation performance??What is composed of innovation legitimacy in perspective of institution?What is innovation legitimacy influence on the enterprises innovation performance?What is composed of innovation resource in perspective of RBV?What is innovation resource influence on the enterprises innovation performance??What is the function mechanism of network embeddedness on the radical innovation performance and what play role of intermediary between them?In order to answer these above mentioned questions,the research paper mainly focuses on the following several aspects:(1)Literature review and theoretical development.Through systematically analyzing of available literatures on network embeddedness theory,institution theory,RBV theory and radical innovation theory so on,we bring out the theory outlines relating to this research,and define the concepts of embedded network,innovation legitimacy,innovation resource and radical innovation which are of importance to the research in the next stage.(2)Exploratory case research and the constructing of theoretical framework.Four typical cases are chosen for the exploratory case study.Through theoretical presupposition,data collection,within-case analysis and comparison among those cases,this paper reveals the influence of enterprise embedded network on innovation legitimacy and on innovation resource acquisition,also showing the relationship between the innovation legitimacy and resource acquisition and radical innovation performance,and finally the preliminary research framework for the relationship between the network embeddedness and radical innovation performance is proposed,which provides a construct for future studies.(3)Theoretical model and empirical study of the relationship between the network embeddedness and radical innovation performance,Based upon exploratory case research and in-depth theoretical analysis,we put forward the concept model about the impact of enterprise embedded network on radical innovation performance,its function mechanism and the corresponding detailed propositions.Through surveying 238 enterprises by the application of descriptive statistical analysis,factor analysis,reliability and validity analysis,hierarchical regression analysis and SEM analysis so on,the model and hypothesis were empirically tested and obtained.Through above research work,the following conclusions can finally be reached:(1)Enterprise's embedded network has positive effect on its radical innovation performance.Under the context of innovation network,the structural,relational and cognitive elements of enterprise network embeddedness are all beneficial to the improvement of its radical innovation performance.(2)Enterprise's innovation legitimacy and innovation resource acquisition has respectively positive impact on its radical innovation performance.The legitimacy of innovation reflects the cognition of organizational innovation behavior by organizational stakeholders,so it is critical to have support from main stakeholders for acquiring innovation legitimacy,which ensures the conduction of radical innovation activities,and further promotes its innovation performance.The resource acquisition and its input play an important role in innovation activities,so the resource acquisition capability of radical innovation is an important indicator in judging whether innovation activities can realize its goals or not.(3)Enterprise's network embeddedness influence radical innovation performance partly through the mediating role of innovation legitimacy and innovation resource acquisition.Concretely speaking,the structural embeddedness promotes innovation performance through improving innovation legitimacy and resource acquisition;the relational embeddedness influences positively innovation performance through increasing innovation legitimacy and innovation resource acquisition;the cognitive embeddedness facilitates innovation performance through enhancing innovation legitimacy acquisition;and innovation legitimacy has positive effect on innovation resource acquisition.Compared with the existing research,several contributions in this research are as follows:(1)This paper expands the theoretical boundary about the research in the field of enterprise's radical innovation.Network embeddedness theory posits that an enterprise cannot exist in isolation from others,but embed in its surrounding social network.Its behavior is influenced by the social relationships among organizations.Institution theory proposes that organizational legitimacy which means gaining identity and support from the society determines the final success of its innovation.Legitimacy explains the social embeddedness of the organization and reflects the cognition of organizational innovation behavior by society.RBV theory suggests that organization's resource determines its survival and future development.That means innovation resource is a key factor that affects the development of enterprise innovation,and embedded network is generally viewed as an important channel of acquiring resource.Apart from that,resource dependency theory also posits the legitimacy which is regarded as a key resource influences the acquisition of enterprise resources.By combining relevant theoretical studies of enterprise network,resource and institution,Focused on enterprise's radical innovation,this paper proposes an integrated framework for enterprise's radical innovation research in multi-theoretical perspectives,and thus further enrich and supplement the theoretical research on radical innovation.(2)This paper explores the intermediary process between network embeddedness and radical innovation performance.Legitimacy acquisition of enterprise's radical innovation depends on the embedded network.Much more interaction between enterprise and its embedded network can promote its innovation legitimacy and thus help to improve innovation performance.Meanwhile,enterprise's network is regarded as significant resource,and is also an important channel of resource acquisition by network embeddedness.Acquisition of innovation resources plays an important role in promoting radical innovation,and also resulting in helping to improve innovation performance.On the basis of those theoretical logics,by taking innovation legitimacy and innovation resources acquisition as two intermediary variables,this research intensively analyzes and reveals the relationship between network embeddedness and radical innovation performance.Therefore,this paper enriches the research on the function mechanism about how network embeddedness can influence radical innovation performance.(3)This paper contributes to the study in the research field of enterprise's legitimacy.In perspective of institution,as the shocks caused by radical innovation to current technologies and market usually induce controversies from all works of life,this paper attempts to elaborate and analyze the concept of innovation legitimacy,and further explore how innovation legitimacy play a critical role in impacting on radical innovation success under institutional enviroment,especially this research proposes the effect of innovation legitimacy on innovation resource acquisition and also empirically reveals the intermediary process(through innovation resources)between innovation legitimacy and radical innovation performance.Therefore,these findings contribute to radical innovation by highlighting the significant impact of innovation legitimacy on radical innovation,and also provide pragmatic implications to Chinese enterprises' radical innovation practice under current institutional transition context.