Study Of The Relationship Between External Knowledge Acquisition And Firm Innovation Performance

The use of external resources by enterprises has become a more and more common phenomenon.The proportion of funds for external research and development by enterprises in some countries was increasing gradually,so as the number of enterprises' foreign cooperative relations.The rapid development of technology and the rapid changes of the market have shorten the product life cycle and accelerated the speed of upgrading.The innovation behavior of enterprises relying on their own research and development activities is restrained.Enterprises gradually turn to the open innovation behavior.More and more enterprises begin to pay attention to strengthen the external knowledge acquisition strategy.Open innovation becomes the focus of enterprise practice and theoretical research.However,how external knowledge affects the innovation performance of enterprises has not been clearly answered.Existing studies have analyzed the relationship between external knowledge acquisition and innovation,and most of them explore the role of external resources in innovation from static and isolated perspectives.Even though the theory of open innovation gets more and more attention,researchers seldom pay attention to the transformation process of external resources in enterprises.Theoretically,resource-based view and dynamic capability theory can well explain the internal development path of resources,but the existing literatures are still insufficient in explaining how external introduced resources combine with organizational capability to form heterogeneous resources that are valuable,scarce,hard to imitate and hard to replace.Therefore,the theory of resource-based view alone cannot explain the impact of external knowledge on the innovation performance,and how enterprises develop internally after acquiring external knowledge.In theory,there is a lack of reasonable explanation,which leads to the lack of in-depth analysis on the influence mechanism of external knowledge acquisition on enterprise innovation in existing literature.In the empirical research,the positive effect of external knowledge acquisition on enterprise innovation has been widely recognized,but there are few studies on the influence mechanism,which is reflected in the lack of discussion on whether there are mediating variables and what mediating variables exist between the two.How to explain the internal development after acquiring external knowledge? How can external knowledge acquired by enterprises become heterogeneous resources and affect innovation performance? At the same time,is external knowledge affected by external factors in the process of affecting innovation performance? Are the ways in which the external knowledge acquisition strategies of enterprises in transition economies affected by the institutional environment?Focusing on the basic problem ��how external knowledge acquisition affects innovation performance,this study integrated resource-based view,dynamic capability theory,innovation theory and institutional theory,and tried to uncover the black box of external knowledge affecting enterprise innovation performance through literature review,theoretical deduction,statistical analysis and other research methods.In the conceptual model of external knowledge acquisition and innovation performance,two orderly chain mediating variables,opportunity identification and internal R & D activities,are introduced,with the institutional environment as the moderating variable.This study argues that external knowledge,by influencing the level of opportunity identification and internal research and development activities,can update and reconstruct the internal knowledge base of enterprises,thus promoting the innovation performance of enterprises.Specifically,the higher the level of acquiring external market knowledge and technical knowledge,the higher the level of opportunity identification and the intensity of internal R & D activities.In turn,opportunity identification has a positive impact on enterprise R & D activities,so that enterprises can achieve better innovation output.At the same time,the internal development process of external knowledge is regulated by the institutional environment.Empirical analysis is used to verify the above views.This papere obtains relevant data of enterprises by means of questionnaire survey and covers 20 provinces and 4 municipalities.Managers above the level of department manager are selected as respondents.In line with the basic requirements of reliability and validity for statistical analysis,correlation analysis,regression analysis and the Bootstrap method for hypothesis test are conducted.Some research findings got as follows.(1)The enterprise's external knowledge acquisition behavior has promoted the level of opportunity identification and internal R & D activities;(2)The opportunity identification and the internal R & D activities are conducive to enterprise innovation output.External knowledge acquisition generate indirect effect on innovation performance through opportunity recognition and internal R & D activities.Fouther more,opportunity recognition can promote internal R & D activities.That is to say opportunity identification and internal research and development activities conduct as orderly chain structure,mediating the positive relationship between external knowledge acquisition and innovation;(3)With the improvement of institutional environment,enterprises are more inclined to allocate resources to productive activities and the positive effects of external knowledge acquisition on opportunity recognition and R & D activities are strengthened.Howerer the effects of external knowledge acquisition on opportunity recognition are not affected by the institutional environment.The theoretical contribution of this study is mainly embodied in the following three aspects.(1)Through theoretical analysis of external knowledge acquisition influencing innovation performance,opportunity recognition and internal R & D activities are introduced as chain intermediary variables into the theoretical framework.New path of external knowledge acquisition influencing innovation performance is established.Previous studies have paid more attention to directly link between the external knowledge as a resource introduced into enterprises and innovation,and knowledge acquisition acts as a direct antecedent for innovation performance.Lacking deep understanding of the essence and process of external knowledge affecting innovation performance,our study explores opportunity recognition and R & D activities funvtion as mediating role to uncover the mechanism of external knowledge acquisition influencing innovation performance;(2)In the perspective of dynamic capability,our study enriches the theory of external knowledge transformation mechinism.Few studies have combined resource-based view with dynamic capability theory to explore how resources with incomplete heterogeneity can be transformed into resource bundles with heterogeneity through dynamic capability.This study explores how externally acquired resources may become valuable,rare,hard-to imitate,and non-substitute resource bundles through the development of dynamic capabilities.From the perspective of resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory,the chain mediation role constructed by opportunity identification and research and development activities,as the microcosmic foundation of dynamic capabilities,update or reconstruct the resource base through the integration of external resources and internal resources,thus affecting the innovation performance of the enterprise;(3)Through the analysis of moderating role of institutional environment(regional market index),this study expands the understanding of the role of external knowledge acquisition.The unmatue market,the unbalanced development of regional instituition and the dual incentive effect of the institution is the characteristics of the domestic transitional economy.Therefore,there are not enough discuss about the process of external acquired knowledge influencing innovation in context of different institutional enviroment.Integrating open innovation theory and institution theory,this research discusses the influence of various level of instutional envrionment in the process of enterprises using external knowledge,and enriches the research on open innovation theory from the perspective of institution.