Research On The Impact Of Slack Resource And Negative Performance Gap On Enterprise Ambidexterity Innovation

With the globalization of competition and the rapid development of science and technology,the complex and turbulent environment at home and abroad make enterprises unable to meet the market demand with single innovation mode.In order to get a place in the fierce competition,enterprises not only need to rely on the improvement and upgrading of existing technologies to survive(exploitative innovation),but also need to break through existing technology fields to explore new technologies and explore new markets for development(explorative innovation),namely ambidextrous innovation.Behavioral theory of the firm points out two driving factors of enterprise innovation search: slack resource(when the enterprise has slack resource,it will actively seeks for innovation)and negative performance gap(when the enterprise has negative performance gap,it is forced to seek for innovation).Based on this,scholars have conducted studies on the relationship between slack resources and enterprise technological innovation,and the relationship between negative performance gap and enterprise technological innovation.They have drawn some influential conclusions.However,the conclusions of these studies are quite different.This paper believes that the main reasons for these differences are as follows.(1)The previous researches only examined the relationship between slack resource and R&D input or innovation output,but lacked the discussion on the relationship between slack resource and ambidextrous innovation.(2)As for the effect of slack resource,the previous research focuses on material slack,which not only lacks the mechanism analysis of how different types of material slack affect different types of innovation,but also lacks the attention to the mechanism of human resource slack(especially knowledge employee slack).(3)The negative performance gap is also an influential factor for enterprises on innovation.However,the preliminary study only analyzes whether enterprises will increase R&D when they faced with the negative performance gap,but does not analyze the impact mechanism of the negative performance gap on enterprise ambidextrous innovation.(4)Lack the discussion of situational factors.Based on the above four points,this paper combines the internal governance factors and the characteristics of the external environment to deeply analyze the influence mechanism of slack resource and Negative performance gap on ambidextrous innovation.Specifically,this paper contains the following three sub-studies.Study 1: To explore the impact of material slack on ambidextrous innovation and introduce CEO's output functional experience,an internal governance factor,as a moderator variable.The specific research questions are as follows: do different types of material slack(unabsorbed slack and unabsorbed slack)have differentiated effects on exploitation innovation and exploration innovation? What is the moderating effect of CEO's output functional experience? This study takes Shanghai and Shenzhen Ashare listed companies as samples and use Poisson regression to conduct empirical research.Meanwhile,the whole sample was divided into two sub-samples of high-tech enterprises and non-high-tech enterprises for robustness test in accordance with the New Measures for The Identification and Management of High-tech Enterprises and Guidelines for the Identification and Management of High-tech Enterprises issued in2008.We found that unabsorbed slack not only promotes exploratory innovation,but also promotes exploitation innovation.Absorbed slack can promote the exploitation innovation,but there is no statistical correlation with the exploration innovation.When the CEO has output functional experience,the positive relationship between unabsorbed slack and exploitation innovation is strengthened,while the positive relationship between unabsorbed slack and exploration innovation is weakened.Simultaneously,the positive relationship between absorbed slack and exploitation innovation is strengthened due to the existence of CEO with output functional experience.However,the moderating effect of CEO's output functional experience on absorbed slack and exploratory innovation is not obvious.Study 2: Discussed the influence of knowledge employee slack on ambidextrous innovation,and introduced environmental uncertainty and degree of market development as the moderating variables.The specific research questions are as follows:how does knowledge employee slack affect ambidextrous innovation? What are the moderating effects of environmental uncertainty and degree of market development?This study takes Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies as samples and use Poisson regression to conduct empirical research.In order to solve endogeneity problems,a variety of methods are used to ensure the robustness of the results,such as replacing the measurement method of independent variables and changing the econometric model.The empirical results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge employee slack and exploitation innovation and exploration innovation,that is,too much and too less slack is not conducive to enterprises' innovation activities However,with the increasing knowledge employee slack,exploitative innovation will be suppressed firstly and then exploratory innovation will be suppressed.Environmental uncertainty not only strengthens the effect of knowledge employee slack on exploitation innovation,but also strengthens the relationship between knowledge employee slack and exploration innovation.The degree of market development not only weakens the effect of knowledge employee slack on exploitation innovation but also weakens the relationship between knowledge employee slack and exploration innovation.Study 3: Discussed the impact of negative performance gap on ambidextrous innovation,and introduced the internal governance factor of CEO's output functional experience,as well as the external environmental characteristics of environmental uncertainty and degree of market development as three moderate variables.The specific research questions are as follows: how does negative performance gap affect exploitative innovation and exploration innovation? How do CEO's output functional experience,environmental uncertainty and market development play moderate role the relationship among them? This study takes Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies as samples and Poisson regression is used to conduct empirical research.In addition,PSM and one-phase lag are adopted to solve the endogenous problems.Meanwhile,it also adopts the methods of changing variable measures and changing the econometric model to ensure the robustness of the research results.The results indicate that the larger the negative performance gap is the worse the exploitative innovation and exploration innovation are.The moderation effect of CEO's output functional experience on the relationship between negative performance gap and exploitative innovation is not obvious,but it strengthen the negative effect of negative performance gap on exploratory innovation.Environmental uncertainty not only weakens the relationship between negative performance gap and exploitive innovation,but also weakens the relationship between Negative performance gap and exploratory innovation.The degree of market development not only strengthens the relationship between the negative performance gap and the exploitative innovation,but also strengthens the relationship between the negative performance gap and the exploration innovation.The contributions come as follows.Firstly,by analyzing the influence of material slack in different types on ambidextrous innovation.It not only details the research on the relationship between slack resources and innovation,but also helps the academic circle to make a more comprehensive judgment on the innovation value of material slack,and it provides a foundation for the different resource demands of ambidextrous innovation.Secondly,this paper analyzes the influence of knowledge employee slack on ambidextrous innovation from the micro perspective of self-efficacy theory,which provides a new perspective to reveal the influence mechanism of ambidextrous innovation and also makes up cognitive deficiency on human resource slack in existing studies.Thirdly,in the study of the relationship between negative performance gap and ambidextrous innovation,internal governance factors and external environmental characteristics are introduced to work as moderate variables,and by introducing situational factors at different levels.This paper extends the application scope and boundary conditions of the theory of firm behavior in the field of innovation.