Research On The Impact Of Enterprise Network Embeddedness On Technology Commercialization

Technology commercialization helps enterprises dominate the current market or develop new markets to gain sustained competitive advantage.However,due to its complex,time-consuming,expensive and high-risk characteristics,enterprise technology commercialization activities often end in failure.Therefore,the efficient management of technology commercialization activities is very important for the improvement of enterprise performance and the creation of competitive advantages.The progress of communication technology,the emergence of the Internet,and the increasing dependence on global markets for products,capital and labour make the market more and more with the characteristics of the network.External network has become the main channel and important context for enterprises to obtain innovation resources,identify innovation opportunities,carry out interactive learning and promote joint action.It is conducive to the smooth promotion and effective implementation of a series of technological commercialization activities such as product development,prototype design,mass production and market promotion.According to social network theory,enterprises’ economic behaviors are often embedded in the network(Uzzi,1996),and they can use their positions in the network and their relationships with other network actors to obtain and transmit information to maintain competitive advantages(Lin et al.,2009;Shi et al.,2021).Although scholars have explored the important impact of network embeddedness on enterprise innovation,but most of them revolve around technology development and product development.There are few concerns about the commercialization stage of technology,which leads to the question whether the impact of network embeddedness on enterprise innovation is equally applicable in the field of technology commercialization and how to open the black box between network embeddedness and technology commercialization.Therefore,it is urgent to explore the impact mechanism of network embeddedness on technology commercialization,introduce multivariate variables,including intermediary variables and contingency variables,to further explore this process,and provide a more systematic and complete theoretical explanation for the impact of network embeddedness on technology commercialization.The higher the degree of enterprise embedding in the external network,the more conducive to information sharing and interactive communication with network actors,which will enable enterprises to obtain more rich and complementary information and knowledge resources in repeated interaction and joint actions,so as to reduce the technological and market uncertainties faced in the process of technology commercialization.Previous studies have shown that relationship learning is the necessary basis and prerequisite for enterprises to take advantage of the close relationship between enterprises and external actors to carry out learning actions to promote enterprise innovation behavior and performance results.Therefore,it remains to be further explored whether the network embeddedness created by the long-term interaction between enterprises and external entities will affect the performance of technology commercialization through the mediating role of relationship learning.In addition,the external manifestation of relationship learning is the acquisition of information and knowledge resources.When enterprises are faced with rich and diversified information and knowledge resources,how to apply these complementary resources to innovation activities to better play the impact of relationship learning on technology commercialization must also take into account the knowledge conversion capability of enterprises.Knowledge conversion capability can be regarded as an indispensable lubricant for enterprises to carry out technology commercialization activities,and its role in relationship learning and technology commercialization is worth further exploring.Based on this,this study focuses on the following four research questions:(1)Whether and how network embeddedness affects technology commercialization;(2)How does relationship learning play a role in this process;(3)What role does knowledge conversion capability play in this process;(4)What is the influence of knowledge conversion capability on the effectiveness of relationship learning?In order to solve the above problems,based on the open innovation theory,social network theory,organizational learning theory and knowledge-based theory,this study systematically reviews the relevant literature achievements of network embeddedness,relationship learning,knowledge conversion capability and technology commercialization.Based on the case analysis of four manufacturing enterprises in Shenzhen,Dongguan,Taizhou and Changchun,the connotation of core constructs and the potential logical relationship between constructs are clarified,and the theoretical model of this study is constructed and the corresponding research hypothesis is proposed.In this study,questionnaires were used to obtain the data of key variables and control variables.Samples were randomly selected from several cities,and a total of359 valid samples were obtained.Then,SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 24.0 were used to analyze the sample data,including non-response bias and common method bias analysis,descriptive statistical analysis and reliability and validity test.On the basis of ensuring the validity of the sample data,empirical tests were conducted on the research hypotheses,and the following conclusions were obtained:(1)The two dimensions of network embeddedness,namely structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness,both have positive impacts on technology commercialization.(2)The three dimensions of relationship learning,namely information sharing,joint sense-making and relationship-specific memory,all play mediating roles between network embeddedness and technology commercialization.(3)Knowledge conversion capability play positive moderating roles between information sharing and technology commercialization,between joint sense-making and technology commercialization,as well as between relationship-specific memory and technology commercialization.(4)Knowledge conversion capability positively moderate the mediating effect of information sharing and relationship-specific memory,but did not significantly moderate the mediating effect of joint sense-making.The purpose of this study is to explore the influence mechanism of network embeddedness on technology commercialization,as well as the function mechanism of relationship learning and knowledge conversion capability in this process,so as to provide a theoretical explanation for how enterprises can use network embeddedness advantages to promote technology commercialization.The theoretical contributions and innovations of this study are mainly reflected in the following three aspects:(1)This study expands the application of social network theory in the field of technology commercialization,reveals the explanatory and predictive role of network embeddedness in the field of technology commercialization,and enriches the research results in the field of technology commercialization.Previous studies mostly explored the pre-factors of technology commercialization from the technical and organizational levels,focusing on the impact of technology attributes,enterprise resources and capability elements,strategic orientation and other factors on technology commercialization.Studies based on the network perspective were limited to network types,network capabilities,and upstream and downstream alliance partnerships.Although the impact of network embeddedness on technology commercialization is well documented,theoretical discussion and empirical test on the relationship between them are still lacking.This study aims to fill this gap by combining social network theory with open innovation theory and exploring the impact of network embeddedness on technology commercialization from two aspects of structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness,so as to further extend the research scope of social network theory.(2)This study reveals the influence mechanism of network embeddedness on technology commercialization,extracts the theoretical analysis framework of "network embeddedness-relationship learning-technology commercialization",and explores the path role of information sharing,joint sense-making and relationship-specific memory.Existing literature has separated the organic relationship between network embeddedness,relationship learning and technology commercialization.However,enterprise innovation practice shows that relationship learning can be regarded as an important carrier for enterprises to promote technology commercialization by taking advantage of network embeddedness.This study builds a dialogue bridge among the three and explores the mediating role of relationship learning between network embeddedness and technology commercialization,so as to uncover the black box between the two and provide a new interpretation logic for the internal process of network embeddedness affecting technology commercialization.(3)This study innovatively proposes that knowledge conversion capability is the boundary condition of relationship learning affecting technology commercialization,and explores the moderating effect of knowledge conversion capability on the three dimensions of relationship learning and technology commercialization,as well as the moderating effect on the mediating role of information sharing,joint sense-making and relationship-specific memory respectively.However,existing researches focus too much on the importance of relationship learning in acquiring external knowledge and improving innovation performance,and ignore the explanation and discussion of the contingency factors that affect the performance of some enterprises in relationship learning better than others.In addition,the empirical results show that knowledge conversion capability does not moderate the relationship between joint sense-making and technology commercialization,nor does it significantly influence the mediating effect of shared understanding.This study proposes possible reasons for the mixed effect of substitution and facilitation,the differential effect of firm attributes,and the moderating effect of external situational factors.It also provides new ideas for further research on the differential influence of knowledge conversion capability on the mediating mechanism of relationship learning.