Research On The Relationship Among Technical Standards Alliance Networks,Knowledge Absorptive Capacity And Corporate Alliance Performance

In the context of digital transformation,technical standards serve as the basis for the modernization of national governance systems and governance capabilities.In-depth implementation of standardization strategy and enhancement of standardization governance efficiency have gradually become the important means including mobilization of firm innovation vitality,seeking core competitiveness,protection of scientific and technical innovation achievements and support of the high-quality development.Under the upsurge of standardization,increasing firms have formulated and implemented standardization strategy,trying to win the initiative and discourse power of market competition by virtue of technical standards.However,digital transformation promotes the conversion of the industry's new and old kinetic energy,and results environmental uncertainty accelerating the speed of technical standards updating,leading to the continuously shortening of firm's standardization life cycle and profoundly changes to the management system of traditional standard,driving the reform and innovation of organization and management.With the development of technology and the evolution of the market,how firms can break through their resource and capacity constraints and enhance the resilience of standardization development are regarded as the key to the survival,development and sustainable competitive advantages.Therefore,how to effectively participate in standardization has become an important issue in standardization research.With the deepening of the reform of standardization work in China,the development of group standards has been booming in recent years,and the network collaborative innovation model has become a new support point for standardization.By participating in one or more technical standards alliances(TSAs),firms can directly or indirectly connect with others in the TSA networks to jointly formulate,implement and promote technical standards.This form of standardization participation can not only absorb and gather the resources and capabilities of alliance members,and promote in-depth cooperation between different firms on research and development of standard,but also disperse standardization investment costs and innovation risks,and contribute to the formation of a unified and coordinated standard system.However,the TSA is still in infancy and has not yet matured in China.In standardization practice,even in the same alliance,not all firms can achieve the expected alliance goals.In fact,although the TSA may allow participants to share the development dividend,whether allied firms can truly benefit still depends on their own standardization participation behavior.Therefore,in order to improve the efficiency of participating in standardization cooperation,it is necessary to specify and guide firms' standardization activities.However,compared with the TSA with strong development momentum,the theoretical and empirical research in the field of standardization lags behind.Previous studies mainly focused on the analysis of the impact of technical standards.Although a few studies indicated the positive impact of participating in standardization,they mostly discussed its impact on the macro-economy or meso-industry level.Few studies involved the micro-firm level and failed to clarify the realization path that firms themselves benefit from participating in standardization through TSAs.Meanwhile,TSA is a special form of strategic alliances.Scholars mostly conduct research around other forms of alliances rather than focusing on the context of TSAs.As the subject of standardization activities,what are the benefits of firms participating in standardization through TSAs?Why are there differences in the alliance performance of different allied firms? How should firms achieve a higher level of performance in standardization cooperation?The answers to these questions are not yet known and need to be further explored.Based on this,this paper focuses on the corporate standardization participation behavior in the context of China's TSAs,with alliance performance(standardization cooperation outcomes)as the guide,discusses the impact mechanism of participation in standardization on the corporate alliance performance from a network perspective,and attempts to explain the causes of performance differences between allied firms and their performance enhancement paths.The main research questions analyzed include:(1)the influence of TSA networks on the corporate alliance performance;(2)the influence of knowledge absorptive capacity on the corporate alliance performance;(3)the role of knowledge absorptive capacity between the TSA networks and corporate alliance performance;(4)under the background of digital transformation,the impact of environmental uncertainty on knowledge absorptive capacity and corporate alliance performance.This paper is based on social network theory,knowledge-based theory and dynamic capability theory.We systematically review and sort out relevant literature results on TSAs,alliance networks,knowledge absorptive capacity,environmental uncertainty,and alliance performance.Combined with the case analysis of 4 allied firms in Shenzhen,Changchun,Hangzhou and Shanghai city,this paper defines the core research constructs,expounds in depth the mechanism of action between variables,further constructs the theoretical research model and proposes corresponding research hypotheses.Aiming at the China's new group standards,an emerging form of alliance standard driven by the market,based on the integrated development trend of informatization and industrialization under the background of digital transformation,taking the allied firms of information technology and automotive industry as the target sample,collecting valid questionnaire survey receipts from 437 allied firms,with the help of SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 22.0 software to carry out descriptive statistical analysis,correlation analysis,factor analysis,and regression analysis to test research hypotheses.Most research hypotheses are supported by empirical data.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The TSA network has a positive impact on corporate alliance performance.Compared with edge firms,central firms can use the advantages of network location to influence the outcomes of standardization cooperation and significantly improve the performance.Meanwhile,a close network relationship with alliance partners will also help firms to achieve more benefits from standardization cooperation;(2)knowledge absorptive capacity has a positive impact on the corporate alliance performance;(3)potential absorptive capacity can enhance the positive relationship between network centrality and corporate alliance performance,and realistic absorptive capacity can enhance the positive relationship between network centrality,network relationship strength and corporate alliance performance;(4)technical uncertainty can enhance the relationship between potential absorptive capacity,realistic absorptive capacity and corporate alliance performance,and market uncertainty can enhance the relationship between realistic absorptive capacity and corporate alliance performance.This paper focuses on standardization participation behaviors of firms.Aiming at the phenomenon of TSAs under the background of digital transformation in China,this paper constructs an integrated theoretical analysis framework of internal and external linkages of "resource-capability-performance".This clarifies the theoretical logic of how firms can participate in standardization effectively.The main innovations and theoretical contributions are as follows:(1)The phenomenon of TSA is analyzed from the network perspective,which enriches the research in the field of standardization.This paper expands the research on strategic alliances to the context of TSAs,and introduces a network perspective to dig deeper into the nature of TSAs,analyzes the internal logic of firms participating in standardization,and not only explore whether participation in standardization will have a positive impact on the firm itself,but more importantly it further reveals how firms can achieve better alliance performance from this cooperation.Different from previous standardization studies,this paper regards the TSA network as a channel for firms to obtain external knowledge resources,and integrates the two dimensions of network centrality and network relationship strength according to the "structure-relationship" dichotomy,and explains its influence mechanism on corporate alliance performance,that is,allied firms should use network position advantages and closely connected network relationships to increase standardization output and promote the improvement of alliance performance.As a result,this paper breaks through the limitations of standardization research that mostly focuses on affecting standard content and market adoption,extends the application scope of alliance networks,and filles up the research gap of TSA networks.Based on the TSA context,it reveals the network influencing mechanism and law of corporate alliance performance based on the TSA context,and demonstrating the practical value of China's group standards,an emerging form of alliance standards.(2)Taking knowledge absorptive capacity into the theoretical research framework,we emphasize the importance of internal dynamic capability from the perspective of knowledge.Technical standards are closely related to knowledge.Although previous studies have pointed out the promoting effect of knowledge absorptive capacity on standardization,this opinion lacks effective empirical support.On the one hand,this study establishes the relationship between knowledge absorptive capacity and external knowledge acquisition mechanism,and examines the relationship between knowledge absorptive capacity and corporate alliance performance,and confirms that this capacity promotes corporate alliance performance.On the other hand,this study verifies the moderating role of knowledge absorptive capacity between TSA networks and corporate alliance performance.Although alliance networks provide firms with external knowledge sources,the ability to effectively absorb and utilize these resources depends on the level of knowledge absorptive capacity.Thus,from the perspective of "resource-capability" interaction,the participation behavior of standardization of firms is discussed,and the internal correlation is established,which effectively explains the firm alliance network access to knowledge resources outside,its uptake and then into the process of corporate alliance performance and its inner mechanism,thus more comprehensive outline of the firms promote the realization of the alliance performance path,providing a new perspective of dynamic capability research.(3)By exploring the impact of environmental uncertainty,it demonstrates the new laws of the TSA under the background of China's digital transformation era.In the context of the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and the accelerated development of emerging industries,the conversion of old and new driving forces has placed firms in a volatile and uncertain environment.Therefore,firms increasingly need to actively respond to and match changes in the external environment,and rely on the stability of technical standards to defuse environmental risks,enhancing the resilience of standardization development.Therefore,based on the main sources of environmental uncertainty and combining the two dimensions of technical uncertainty and market uncertainty,this paper analyzes the impact of environmental factors on the participation behavior of standardization of firms,and proves that the corporate alliance performance results from the synergistic interaction effect of external environment and internal adaptation.Thus,this paper proved the knowledge absorptive capacity affects corporate alliance performance boundary conditions,and the conclusions obtained from this study are applicable to the TSAs of China's contextual characteristics.It is of great significance for reflecting the standardization practices of Chinese firms,and providing new ideas for grasping localized technical standardization issues.Meanwhile,it makes up the deficiency of the previous standardization research on the role of environmental factors,enriches the theoretical research results in this field,and provides theoretical support for the development of firms in the transition period of standardization strategy decision-making.