| According to the historical experience for Chinese manufacturers in realizing innovation development,integrating and utilizing the knowledge pertaining to supply chain partners are essential for most manufacturers in China.This also causes some challenges and threats for Chinese manufacturers,such as limited core technology and high dependence on external advanced technology.As the marketplace is increasingly characterized by supply chain competing against supply chain,the effective utilization of knowledge from upstream and downstream supply chain partners is crucial for firms' innovation development,especially for Chinese manufacturers which have limited internal knowledge and resources for innovation.Therefore,it is necessary to explore what are the actual role of supply chain knowledge integration in the innovation development for Chinese manufacturers,and how to develop this capability properly.Meanwhile,the outstanding characters of the institutional environment,high level of government support and dysfunctional competition have significant effects on the manufacturers' strategy,behaviors and performance.In this way,there has been a need to explore the roles played by the distinct institutional factors in China.Based on a comprehensive literature of knowledge integration,intellectual capital and related theoretical perspectives including absorptive capacity,organizational inertia theory and institutional theory,in this study,we established a conceptual model to analyze the antecedents of supply chain knowledge integration capability and its impact on patenting performance,as well as the moderating roles of government support and dysfunctional competition.Specifically,in this study,we focus on the following three research parts:(1)exploring the effects of intellectual capital and R&D investment on supply chain knowledge integration capability,including supplier knowledge integration,customer knowledge integration,university/research institute(U&RI)knowledge integration;(2)exploring the impacts of supply chain knowledge integration capability on the manufacturer's patenting performance;(3)exploring the moderating roles of government support and dysfunctional competition in analyzing the consequence of supply chain knowledge integration capability.Related hypotheses are proposed correspondingly.To test the proposed hypotheses,by combining the data collected through survey as well as the secondary data on patent from the State Intellectual Property Office of China,we got a dataset with 228 Chinese manufacturers.The empirical analysis reveals the following findings:(1)Intellectual capital has positive and significant effect on supplier knowledge integration,customer knowledge integration,U&RI knowledge integration.(2)R&D investment has a positive and significant effect on customer knowledge integration and U&RI knowledge integration.The impact of R&D investment on supplier knowledge integration is not significant.(3)All the three dimensions of supply chain knowledge integration capabilities have a significant inverted U-shaped relationship with the manufacturer's patenting performance.On the one hand,the increasing level of supply chain knowledge integration lead to more knowledge elements injection and more possible combinations of knowledge elements,enhancing the manufacturer's patenting performance.On the other hand,the increasing level of supply chain knowledge integration also leads to increasing threats to patenting performance because of the increasing competency traps due to the resource commitment to supply chain knowledge integration and ignorance of other key external knowledge sources such as small suppliers or customer.Intgerating these two aspects,the inverted U-shaped relationships between supply chain knowledge integration and patenting peroformance are supported.(4)Government support has a positive and significant moderating effect on the relationship between U&RI knowledge integration and patenting performance.(5)Dysfunctional competition has a positive and significant moderating effect on the relationship between customer knowledge integration and patenting performance.Based on these analyses,this study enriches the understanding of supply chain knowledge integration from the following three aspects.First,this study enriches the understanding of the antecedents of supply chain knowledge integration by investigating the individual impacts of intellectual capital and R&D investment on three kinds of supply chain knowledge integration capabilities.Second,with the combination of absorptive capacity and organizational inertia theory,this study examines the nonlinear relationships between supply chain knowledge integration capabilities and patenting performance,which reconciles the conflicting views about the relationship between supply chain knowledge integration capability and innovation.This also helps to explain the inconsistent findings regarding to the relationship between supply chain knowledge integration capability and innovation.In this way,this study contributes to the literature that examines the outcomes of supply chain knowledge integration.Third,this study enriches the contingency perspective of supply chain knowledge integration by testing the moderating roles of government support and dysfunctional competition. |
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