The Impact Of Divisive Faultlines On Cooperative Innovation Performance In Technological Innovation Network

The technology innovation network has a loose coupling characteristic of overall unification and local independence.Network members often cooperate and compete with each other,and trust and doubt each other,which makes the technical innovation network show a sparse network form on the whole,and may continue to be divided into several smaller subgroups.Scholars have realized that faction,clique,modular,community and other medium subgroup structure widespread in technology innovation network can have an important impact on organizational innovation behavior and performance,but these studies are always based on the statistical characteristics of data,and use computer algorithm to identify subgroups directly,the leading factors of network subgroup structure is less discussed.At the same time,the concept of faultline gradually attracted the attention of scholars in the study of diversity and subgroup.Subgroup is an important part of faultlines research,the possibility of subgroup formation,and the clarity of the boundaries between subgroups are the core mechanism of faultline effect.Recent studies have extended the faultlines theory from groups of individuals to groups of organizations,but both of the meaning and composition of faultline in groups of organizations are not clear,and we still don't know how it affects inter-organizational groups.Introducing the faultline theory at the inter-organizational group level into the technological innovation network can provide important basis for exploring the presupposition factors of meso-network sub,group structure,and it can also lay a foundation for further extension of faultline theory at the inter-organizational network level.Firstly,this paper introduces the concept of "divisive faultlines" at inter-organizational level to clarify the connotation and composition of divisive faultlines.On this basis,this paper analyzes the internal cause of the formation of subgroup structure of technological innovation network from divisive faultlines perspective,and discusses the indirect influence of divisive faultlines on cooperative innovation performance through subgroup structure.In this paper,the joint patent application of electronic information industry in China from 2000 to 2014 was used as a sample to construct the inter-firms technology innovation network,and multiple hierarchical regression method was used to empirically test the influence of divisive faultlines,subgroup structure formation on cooperative innovation performance.The main conclusions and innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)This paper extends the concept of divisive faultlines to technological innovation network,and discusses the connotation and composition of divisive faultlines from two aspects of attribute and relationship between members based on partner selection theory,which enriches the faultline theory,and also provides a new idea for the study of partner selection.At present,faultlines research mainly focuses on the team and organizational level in groups of individuals,and faultlines theory which takes groups of firms as the object of study is still very insufficient.Existing studies have extended the faultline theory to multilateral alliance at the inter-organization level,and proposed the concept of divisive faultlines from the perspective of relational embeddedness,laying a foundation for the study of the faultline at the inter-organization level.However,the existing studies only extended the faultline theory from the perspective of relational embeddedness,did not systematically analyze the connotation and composition of the faultline theory at the inter-organizational level from a broader perspective,nor did they clearly give the definition of divisive faultlines,which limited the further extension of the concept of divisive faultlines.Therefore,in order to make up for these deficiencies,this paper mainly does two aspects of work:first,using "divisive faultlines"concept based on existing research,and define it as,"the internal differentiation tendency of the overall network caused by degree of shared experience differences between members".Secondly,dividing divisive faultlines into attribute-type divisive faultlines and relational-type divisive faultlines based on partner selection theory.By analyzing the connotation and composition of divisivefaultlines,it can lay an important foundation for further extension of faultline theory in the inter-organizational network level.(2)This paper reveals the internal cause of subgroup structure formation and development in technological innovation network from the perspective of divisive faultlines,and analyzes and verifies the moderating effect of actor' s heterogeneity,structural embeddedness and position embeddedness in this process,which makes up for the deficiency of subgroup formation research to some extent.In view of the existing research on less formation of subgroup structure,this paper considers divisive faultlines as a prerequisite factor for the subgroup structure formation,uses factor index to measure the extent of the subgroup structure formation,which confirmed the important influence of divisive faultlines on subgroup structure formation,and found different divisive faultlines have different influence on subgroup structure formation.That is,the infl uence of attribute-type divisive faultlines on the subgroup structure formation can only be effective under certain circumstances,while the influence of relational-type divisive faultlines on the subgroup structure formation is more significant,and relational-type divisive faultlines also presents strong substitutability to attribute-type divisive faultlines.In addition,this study proposed the moderating effect of actor's heterogeneity,structural embeddedness and position embeddedness on the relationship between divisive faultlines and subgroup structure formation from the aspects of diversity and embeddedness.It was found that under the condition of moderate actor's heterogeneity,the effect of attribute-type divisive faultlines on the subgroup structure was stronger than under the condition of low and h igh actor 's heterogeneity.The influence of relational-type divisive faultlines on the subgroup structure and the substitution of the relational-type divisive faultlines on the attribute-type divisive faultlines can be strengthened by structural embeddedness and position embeddedness.This paper not only make up for the insufficiency of existing research on the preconditioning factors of subgroup structure,but also clarify the actual connection between the divisive faultlines and subgroup,and discuss the conditional mechanism that can trigger the divisive faultlines effect.(3)Based on the logic chain of faultline-subgroup-result,this paper constructs the theoretical framework of the effect of divisive faultlines on cooperative innovation performance,and reveals the role of divisive faultlines play in technological innovation network from the strmctural level by integrating the theory of divisive faultlines and cohesive subgroup.In order to clarify the relationship between diivisive faultlines and performance,subgroup structure is taken as an independent variable and included in the same framework for analysis.By constructing the theoretical framework of the divisive faultlines-subgroup structure-cooperative innovation performance,this paper examines whether the divisive faultlines affects network operation results through subgroup structure.The results show that the divisive faultlines can indirectly affect the cooperative innovation performance through subgroup structure,but the subgroup structure formation only plays a partial mediation role.This indicates that the subgroup structure identified from the network topology is only the dominant path in the structural level of the divisive faultlines effect,while other more implicit approaches,such as cognition and behavior,need to be further explored.In addition,it is found in this paper that the subgroup structure generated by the divisive faultlines will bring the subgroup problems of"in-group"and"out-group",but the subgroup problems do not necessarily bring negative effects.On the one hand,divisive faultline.s can promote the knowledge sharing and cooperation efficiency within the group by improving the cohesion within the group,which is conducive to the cooperative innovation performance of subgroups.On the other hand,divisive faultlines can hindering the knowledge flow among groups,leading to competition and conflict among groups,and hindering the cooperation among sub-groups by intensifying the isolation between groups,which is not conducive to the overall network cooperation innovation performance.