Study On The Influence Mechanism Of Standards Alliance Networks Embedding On Firms’ Technology Innovation Performance

As the important technical foundation of the national economy,technical standards determine the choice of technology innovation path and the formulation of technology competition rules.They are the strategic commanding point of industrial development in the future.In the context of China’s transitional economy,the leading role of technical standards has become increasingly prominent in the process of promoting technology innovation and high-quality economic development by the conversion of old and new driving forces.With the increasingly fierce competition for global standards,firms gradually realize the strategic significance of technical standards,and have formulated and implemented standardization strategy,trying to promote their own technology to become industry standards and even international standards in order to obtain long-term innovation benefits.However,with the rapid arrival of a new round of technical revolution and industrial transformation has given birth to a large number of technology and market uncertainties,which not only bring historic development opportunities,but also pose severe challenges to technical standards innovation.Under the changing circumstances,technology development and market evolution have placed urgent demands on the speed and quality of standard supply.How companies speed up the standardization process and reconstruct the standard competition landscape is regarded as the key to seeking higher-level innovation and development and obtaining sustainable competitive advantages.In recent years,technical standards alliances have become the mainstream mode for firms to implement standardization strategies with its remarkable synergistic effect.As the external environment becomes increasingly turbulent and complex,more and more companies choose to join multiple technical standards alliances,cross alliance borders and establish network cooperation relationships with different alliance partners to jointly develop,implement and promote technical standards.This standardization model not only greatly improves firms’ standardization efficiency,but also decentralizes standardization risks and costs.It also provides rich knowledge resources for firms to further carry out technical standards innovation.However,although the development of technical standards alliances has been booming in recent years,it is still in the initial stage as a whole due to the late start of standardization work in China.In the practice of standard alliances,not all firms participating in the technical standards alliances can obtain the ideal innovation income,and continuous standardization path exploration is imperative.Compared with the booming technical standards alliances,theoretical research in the field of standardization is relatively lagging.The existing research on the effects of standard alliances mostly focuses on the meso-level industry and the macroeconomic level,while few studies have analyzed the benefits of participating in technical standards alliances and their specific implementation paths from the micro level of the firms.In addition,although a few scholars have noticed the networked characteristics of technical standards alliances,the research on alliance networks focusing on technical standards alliances is still relatively scarce,and qualitative research is the main focus,mostly from a certain aspect of alliance network characteristics.And it does not examine the relationship between the embeddedness dimensions of the standards alliance networks and the firms’ innovation performance comprehensively and systematically.Based on the realistic and theoretical background,this paper establishes the research theme of "How does the standards alliance networks embedding affects the firms’ technology innovation performance".Around this theme,this paper analyzes the following three basic questions deeply: Firstly,how does the embeddedness characteristics of standards alliance networks affect the firms’ technology innovation performance? Second,how can firms in standards alliance networks achieve a higher level of innovation performance? Finally,what role does environmental uncertainty play in the process of standards alliance networks embedding influencing the firms’ technology innovation performance?Around the above issues,based on network embedding theory,knowledge-based theory,and organizational learning theory,we review and summarize the relevant literatures on technical standards alliances,standards alliance network,relationship learning,knowledge integration,environmental uncertainty and firms’ technology innovation performance systematically.Then this paper defines the main variables,and analyze the interaction mechanism between variables in depth.Based on the research paradigm of "structure(S)-behavior(C)-performance(P)" from the network perspective,this research builds a theoretical and logical framework of "standards alliance networks embedding-relationship learning and knowledge integration-firms’ technology innovation performance".Meanwhile,considering the contingency effect of environmental uncertainty,the research model of this paper is further established and the corresponding research hypothesis is proposed.According to the research design,this paper obtains 501 valid sample data through questionnaire survey taking enterprises in information industry and manufacturing industry as samples.With the help of SPSS 25.0,AMOS 22.0 and Bootstrap test method,this paper analyzes empirically the collected data and draws the following research conclusions:(1)Standards alliance networks embedding has a positive impact on the firms’ technology innovation performance.Both structural and relationship embedding dimensions contribute to the improvement of the firms’ technology innovation performance;(2)Relationship learning and knowledge integration play a dual intermediary role between standards alliance networks embedding and the firms’ technology innovation performance;(3)Relationship learning and knowledge integration play a chain intermediary role between standards alliance networks embedding and the firms’ technology innovation performance;(4)Environmental uncertainty positively regulates the relationship between relationship learning and firms’ technology innovation performance.Among them,the positive adjustment effect of the market uncertainty dimension is significant,while the adjustment effect of the technology uncertainty dimension is not significant.(5)Environmental uncertainty positively regulates the indirect effects of standards alliance networks embedding on the firms’ technology innovation performance through relationship learning and knowledge integration.This paper aims to explore the impact mechanism of standards alliance networks embedding on the firms’ technology innovation performance under the context of transition economy of China.The main innovations and theoretical contributions are as follows:(1)This paper expands the research on network embeddedness to the context of technical standards alliances.In view of the networked trend of the technical standards alliances,this paper digs into the network attributes of the technical standards alliances from the perspective of network embeddedness,and clearly defines the concept and dimensions of the standards alliance networks embedding.Starting from this,this paper analyzes the impact of the embeddedness characteristics of the standards alliance networks on the firms’ technology innovation performance.This study demonstrates that the structural and relationship embeddedness of the standards alliance networks is a necessary condition for firms to obtain technology innovation benefits from standard cooperation,and reveals the network influence mechanism of the technical standards alliances.Thus,this research further expands the research perspective in the field of standardization,makes up for the lack of standardization research at the micro level of the enterprises,and extends the application field of network embedding theory.(2)This paper explores the dual intermediary and chain intermediary between relationship learning and knowledge integration in the standards alliance networks embedding and the firms’ technology innovation performance,and reveals the internal mechanism of the standards alliance networks embedding influencing the firms’ technology innovation performance from the knowledge level.The standards alliance network is an external source of knowledge for firms to carry out technical innovation,but no research has revealed how firms can transform the knowledge resources in the standards alliance networks into firms’ technology innovation performance.Relationship learning,as a means of knowledge acquisition consistent with the characteristics of the standards alliance networks,helps companies acquire high-quality innovative knowledge.At the same time,the standards alliance networks embedding promotes the integration and reconstruction of the acquired new knowledge with the original knowledge,which is the key to the real innovation and development of the enterprise.In addition,the external knowledge acquired through relationship learning in the standards alliance networks must be transformed into technology innovation performance through knowledge integration.Therefore,based on organizational learning theory and knowledge-based theory,this research constructs a theoretical model of dual mediation effects and chain mediation effects that include relationship learning and knowledge integration.And proposes the knowledge intermediary mechanism of "internal and external linkage" which combines external relationship learning and internal knowledge integration,which fully opens the "black box" of the standards alliance networks embedding influencing firms’ technology innovation performance.(3)Environmental characteristic factors are introduced into the research to promote the research on the contingency effect of the relationship between the standards alliance networks embedding and the firms’ technology innovation performance.With the increasing uncertainty of technology and the market environment in the context of economic transformation,the standards alliance networks embedding has become an inevitable choice for firms to respond to changes in the external environment.The influence of corporate behaviors in the alliance network on its performance is highly context-dependent and will be affected by the contingency factor of the external environment.Therefore,the compatibility of organizational behavior with the external environment should be fully considered.However,this issue has not yet attracted attention in standardization research.In order to maintain standard competitive advantages and obtain sustainable innovation benefits in a turbulent and complex environment,firms need to respond to environmental changes actively and accelerate the learning and integration of knowledge resources in the alliance network.Therefore,this article divides environmental uncertainty into two dimensions:technology uncertainty and market uncertainty,and incorporates it into the research framework as a moderating variable,revealing the moderating effect of environmental characteristics on the mediating effect of relationship learning and knowledge integration,and thus further explain the complex mechanism of the standards alliance networks embedding and the firms’ technology innovation performance,and provide a theoretical reference for the firms’ standardization strategic decision-making.