Effects Of Multiple Network Embeddedness And Ambidextrous Learning On Innovation Performance

The network structure is an important factor for influencing innovation and so it has attracted the attention of many domestic and foreign scholars.By dividing the ambidextrous learning in to explorative innovation and exploitative innovation,this dissertation focus on the study of the moderating effect of network intensity and network stability between ambidextrous innovation and new venture performance as well as the influence mechanism of social network between innovation and performance.Firstly,this study focuses on explaining the mediating mechanism of AOL on the relationship between NE and IP.Theoretical construction and empirical research approach are adopted.Drawing on Resource Based View and Organizational Learning theory,a theoretical model and four research hypotheses are presented.A sample of 305 respondents from MSMEs firms in Sierra Leone is analyzed to test the hypotheses.The results show that the hypotheses proposed in this paper are verified.The research conclusions are as follows.The network structure has attracted the attention of many domestic and foreign scholars as an important factor influencing innovation.But they usually ignore the hierarchy of the network structure.In this paper,ambidextrous learning is divided into two dimensions: explorative innovation and exploitative innovation.This paper breaks the paradigm of single-level network and explores the moderating effect of network intensity of pair-level and network stability of network-level between ambidextrous innovation and new venture performance by constructing a combined moderating effect model of ambidextrous innovation,the multilevel network structure and new venture performance.This paper explores the moderating effect of network intensity(pair-level)and network stability(networklevel between ambidextrous innovation and new venture performance,and contributes to understanding the influence mechanism of social networks between innovation and performance.The results show that network intensity and network stability positively regulate the relationship between ambidextrous innovation and new venture performance.In addition,network stability is seen as a situational variable,and the joint moderating effect of network stability and network intensity between ambidextrous innovation and new venture performance is supported.This contributes to understanding the hierarchical interaction effect of the multilevel network structure.This paper has important practical values for new ventures to carry out innovation activities using external social network relations,improve enterprise performance,and achieve sustainable development.Secondly,based on resource-based view(RBV)and organizational learning theories,the study has built theoretical conceptual model of multiple networks embedding influencing enterprises’ l innovation performance from the perspective of organizational learning.The work discussed the internal mechanism of ambidextrous organizational learning activities affected by embedded relationship,embedded structure and embedded resource influencing technological innovation performance.Through obtaining data form 305 respondents in management of MSMEs in Sierra Leone,the study systematically validated the conceptual model with the structural equation model.It showed that embedded relationship,embedded structure and embedded resource in enterprise organization network can effectively improve the enterprise’s organizational learning capability,bringing significant promotion in innovation performance.Wherein,the embedded relationship and embedded resource can promote not only the innovation performance of the enterprise,but also the performance by improving the knowledge management ability of the enterprise.While,the promotion effect of embedded structure to enterprises’ technological innovation majorly relies on the fully-mediated.The macro-scopical trend of modern enterprise networking development and the innovation performance model of Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises(MSME’s)also has gradually developed from the single model by taking a new paradigm of network embeddedness and regulated by ambidextrous organizational learning.Many studies(Zahra,Ireland et al.2000,Yli‐Renko,Autio et al.2001,Uzzi 2018)have found that network embedding has generally become one of the most important factors that even determine the enterprise innovation portfolio.Networks enhance firms’ accessibility to new knowledge,external resources,technologies and new market opportunities(GF1).Polanyi proposed the concept of embeddedness in 1968 and defined it as the degree to which economic activity is constrained by noneconomic institutions.This phenomenon has seen diverse classification but still maintains its central core denotation of organizational relationship and their related economic activities.Morone and Taylor(2004)argue network embedding is one of the most important features in modern organization relationships.Echols and Tsai(2005)define Network embeddedness as a concept regarding “the structure of a firm’s relationship with other firms—specifically,the extent to which a firm is connected to other firms” and it was classified into three dimensions by Inkpen and Tsang(2005),namely,cognitive,structural and relational embeddedness.Cognitive embeddedness,on the other hand,represents the shared representations,goals,norms,faith and experience among network members(Le Breton-Miller and Miller 2009,G?lgeci and Ferraris et al.2019).Thirdly,optimal resource utilization,competitive advantage,economic growth,national and institutional development are major concerns of the practical business world.Captains of industry and national systems are in constant strife to develop approaches that provide better and or alternate solutions to existing national problems.National systems have relatively similar concerns,with a special focus on regulating industrial activities towards the achievement of national goals.The relevance of industry-government interaction is very important to emerging in economies.This is because the overwhelming consensus supports the premise that industrial action is the catalyst for national growth and economic development.Industry runs on competitive advantage as a means of attaining sustainability,thus a constant search for and need for innovation.Higher Education institutions are renowned for churning out innovation through research,patents and skilled labor.Sub-Saharan Africa,for all its successes in the past decade still faces a major challenge in generating relevant research to innovate its internal industrial and economic space.National systems have tried several approaches to review and resolve these challenges.The synergy between academia,industry and government,is proposed to provide the catalytic change towards innovating national systems.Several research postulations have been formulated around this expectation with the prevailing one being the Triple Helix Theory of Innovation.The Triple Helix Theory is largely successful in the European and Western Economies with several evidence-based research and publications.The dissertation extends the core principles of the Triple Helix Theory to sub-Saharan Africa as it seeks to review the existing complexities and dynamics that prevail within the innovation network that exists therein.Fourthly,on the basis of this,the thesis postulates that,appreciation of the relational dynamics and impact of actor activities in innovation networks is relevant in determining the conditions of partnership,the mechanisms of sustaining the network as well as the role of actor activities(for example imitation)is critical to the overarching success of innovation networks.Methodically,this dissertation has adopted modified and adapted principles of complex networks to highlight the topology of the innovation networks that exist in sub-Saharan Africa.Further,using numerical deductions the endogenous and exogenous complexities and dynamics of interactions within innovation spaces were assessed to explicate multi-criteria decisions making of actors,the effects of diverse funding on sustainability as well as the impact of imitation on innovation within highly competitive but resourcestarved innovation networks.Thus,the dissertation has at its core the desire to investigate and make policy suggestions towards the restructuring of interactions between actors within the innovation networks of sub-Saharan Africa.Finally,the structure of the dissertation begins with the first chapter conducting an expose of the prevailing characteristics of innovation networks in relation to the principles of the Triple Helix Theory.The second chapter provides an in-depth theoretical review and foundations upon which this dissertation finds support.Chapter 5 concentrated on developing a multi-criteria performance measurement model as a means of predicting partnership selection within innovation networks.The fourth chapter,building on the multi-criteria performance model,conducts an analysis of how innovation partners provide requisite conditions in sustaining research networks as a means of innovation sources.The dissertation in Chapter6,conducted an analysis of how government policy affects the evolutionary dynamics of innovation networks and how this affects two core objectives of innovation networks that is funding and generation of innovation.Chapters 6 and 7 were dedicated to the analysis of the dynamics of imitation on the innovation process as well as innovation banks of actors in the innovation network.Finally,the eighth chapter provided a conclusion and policy implications of the d categorically;the findings of this research show that: using a simple multi-criteria performance model coupled with smart search algorithms helps industrial actors in an innovation network predict globally best sources of innovation as potential partners.Secondly,the dissertation finds that the combined impact of government and industrial participation in research helps establish researchers relatively faster than when they operate in isolation.Further,the study provides evidence that research institutions are more likely to be sustainable if they are able to source funding through diverse sources.Another major finding of this dissertation is that when the policy process is allowed to flow and develop,the affecting spaces tend to be positively impacted.This finding further shows that collaborating institutions and subsequently their individual attributes,at both the system and individual levels assist in policies having a positive influence on innovation spaces growth,evolution,and possible sustenance.Further,the dissertation,based on research evidence has provided explanatory solutions to three major questions that prevail in typical innovation networks.However,knowing how;the role of actor performance,industrial influence and government regulation affects innovation networks sparks the search for how the adoption of innovation is affected by some defined condition.The Triple Helix principle and its affiliate complexities require researchers to develop robust approaches that help inform policy as well as general decision making within the network.Using the approaches developed helps to show that industry-university-government interactions help sustain innovation but require extensive research in order to identify the critical points and factors that assure and sustain competitive advantage for actors.Last but not the least,the findings of this research offers the opportunity to make recommendations on policies that may be specifically constructive and appropriate to understanding,managing,and improving on innovation activities within emerging economies.Specifically,policies that focus on improving higher education and research institutions as pivotal actors in the innovation space.The main innovations of this dissertation can be summarized as follow aspects:(1)develops a robust model for identifying the partnership potential of actors within a complex network of innovation and shows how this can be used to predict potentially yielding innovation spaces,(2)examining how the industries participation in research helps establish and sustain research networks in innovation partnership;(3)indicates how the government action can help existing innovation networks grow as well as predicts sustainability of such networks as signaled by the increasing participation of industrial firms;(4)examines the influence of innovation partnership on innovation adoption process subsequently the observations that will be develop from this objective will be used to assesses;(5)assesses the impact of innovation on the innovation resources of firms within competitive innovating spaces.The main result presented in this thesis are new and which have practical values for new ventures to carry out innovation activities using external social network relations,improve enterprises performances,and achieve sustainable development.