A Study On The Influence Mechanisms Of Transactive Memory System And Open Innovation On Innovation Ambidexterity

As the key element which can promote economic growth,technology plays an important role in industrial upgrading and enterprise development.In particular,as the economy of China has entered the new normal,technological innovation has been famous in the business system.Under the situation that the economic system is changing,firms must follow the trend of technological development and organically coordinate short-term economic benefits and long-term competitive advantages in order to achieve success.The increase of short-term revenue depends on the improvement of innovation efficiency and the upgrading of products,and is closely related to the achievement of exploitative innovation.The long-term value-added depends on the flexibility of innovation which is the outcome of exploratory innovation.Exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation make some tensions and conflicts in resource allocation,cognitive style,and operational structure.The achievement of innovation ambidexterity provides many challenges to the company.How to formulate a far-sighted innovation strategy,achieve the balance and coordination of exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation within an organization,and promote the realization of the innovation ambidexterity are the key issues that firms need to solve urgently.Therefore,exploring the realization mechanism of innovation ambidexterity has become a crucial research subject for firms and scholars.Innovation ambidexterity literature suggests that if firms want to realize innovation ambidexterity,they must resolve the tension in the allocation of scarce resources between exploratory and exploitative innovations.This brings two challenges to the company.The first challenge is at the cognitive level of the top management team.The top management team needs to rationally allocate scarce resources between the two competitive innovation activities so as to promote the realization of innovation ambidexterity.The second challenge is the acquisition of resources at the organizational level.In addition to the rational allocation of scarce resources by top management teams,companies also need to meet the different needs of innovative resources between exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation through expanding the amount of resource reserves.In this study,we focus on the transactive memory system in top management teams and open innovation of the enterprise.From the perspectives of the top management team's cognitive resources and enterprise open activities,we explore the influence mechanisms of each and their interactive effect on innovation ambidexterity.Particularly,in recent years,the application of transactive memory system in the cognitive field of top management team has attracted widespread attention,but its effects on innovation ambidexterity is still lacking in-depth discussion.In addition,although scholars have already demonstrated the positive impact of open innovation on innovation-related outcomes,most of the previous research is based on a specific form of open innovation to explore its impact on innovation performance.There are very few articles systematically discussing the relationship between open innovation and innovation ambidexterity.How firms expand their resource reserves through open activities to meet the different strategic needs is an urgent issue for the theoretical literature.Therefore,exploring the mechanisms of the top management team's transactive memory system and open innovation on innovation ambidexterity has great theoretical value and practical contributions.Upper echelons theory and knowledge-based view provide the theoretical framework for this study.The knowledge-based view suggests that firms can effectively expand their scarce resources reserves by obtaining necessary resources from outside and improving their technological capabilities through open activities.Upper echelons theory is the framework that explains the top team's decision-making mechanism for organizational strategy and performance.This theory suggests that the use and distribution of resources within an organization,as well as the selection and formulation of corporate strategies,are all dependent on the cognitive resources of the top management team;The contingency perspective of upper echelons theory also considers the cognitive resources of the senior management team as contingent factors that affect the effectiveness of firms' open activities.Scholars agree that the top management team can effectively improve the value and benefits of open activities by evaluating,selecting and applying the external resources to the corresponding strategies.Therefore,based on upper echelons theory and knowledge-based view,this study explores the effects of top team's transactive memory system,open innovation,and their interactive influence on innovation ambidexterity.Taking the realization mechanism of innovation ambidexterity as the main line,based on the innovation ambidexterity literature,upper echelons theory,and knowledge-based view,and combining theory and viewpoints such as transactive memory system,open innovation,goal orientation,and shared leadership,this article conducts three studies:(1)Examining the influence mechanism of the top team's transactive memory system on innovation ambidexterity,analyzing the mediating role of shared leadership behaviors,and exploring the moderating role of the different types of team goal orientation;(2)Exploring the effects of inbound open innovation and outbound open innovation on innovation ambidexterity,and analyzing the mediating role of organizational learning goal orientation;(3)Exploring the moderating role of top team's transactive memory system on the relationship between the open innovation and innovation ambidexterity,and then investigating the contingency role of the top team external advice seeking on the effects of transactive memory system.Based on the above three studies,the influence mechanism of top team's transactive memory system and firm's open innovation on innovation ambidexterity will be revealed,and their interaction mechanism on the attainment of innovation ambidexterity will be validated.Through questionnaire survey and empirical analysis,this study used multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling to test related hypotheses.The results and contributions are as following:(1)Top management team's transactive memory system is positively related to innovation ambidexterity,and shared leadership mediates the relationship between transactive memory system and ambidexterity.The higher the top team learning goal orientation or performance approach goal orientation,the stronger the relationship between transactive memory system and shared leadership,and subsequently,higher levels of ambidexterity.The moderating effect of team performance avoidance goal orientation on the relationship between transactive memory system and shared leadership is not verified.(2)Firm's inbound open innovation has a positive relationship with ambidexterity,and outbound open innovation also has a positive impact on innovation ambidexterity.The organizational learning goal acts as a significant mediation between inbound open innovation and innovation ambidexterity,outbound open innovation and innovation ambidexterity.(3)The top team's transactive memory system plays a significantly positive moderating role in the relationship between open innovation and innovation ambidexterity.When the top team's transactive memory system is stronger,the relationship between inbound open innovation and innovation ambidexterity will be stronger,and the stronger is the positive effect of outbound open innovation on innovation ambidexterity.The top team external advice seeking positively moderate on the impact of transactive memory system on the relationship between open innovation and innovation ambidexterity.When the top team conducts higher levels of external advice seeking,the positive moderating effect of transactive memory system is expected to increase.The theoretical contributions are:(1)Revealing the underlying mechanism of how top management teams address the requirement of differentiation and integration for ambidexterity,expanding the application of upper echelons theory,explaining the effects of the top team's cognitive resources on the company's innovation strategy,and thus providing a new thought for answering the question of how to achieve innovation ambidexterity from the perspective of top management team's cognition.(2)Explaining the important role of cross-organizational knowledge flows in differentiating and integrating the firm's knowledge bases,and clarifying the symbiotic relationship between open innovation and organizational culture;This study makes some contributions in understanding the path of technological innovation in open firms and how to achieve ambidexterity through open activities.(3)Confirming that the top management team's cognitive resources influence the effectiveness of the firm's open innovation practices,further revealing the complementary effects of internal and external factors in addressing the the requirement of differentiation and integration for ambidexterity,and providing a new perspective to understand how the interaction between the firm's open innovation practices and the top team's cognitive resources determines the attainment of innovation ambidexterity.The conclusions of this article provide practical basis and decision-making guidance for corporate managers to construct distributed cognitive structure,encourage top management teams to make collective decisions,actively import external knowledge and implement external commercialization,and create a learning-oriented organizational atmosphere.