A Study On Opportunistic Behaviors Of Boundary Spanners In Enterprise Cooperative Innovation

With the increasingly fierce market competition,cooperative innovation between enterprises has become an important development strategy.Cooperative innovation integrates resources from all parties to achieve synergistic value-added and improve the overall level of competition.In the cooperative innovation between enterprises,opportunistic behaviors seriously hinder the healthy development of the relationship between the two parties and restrict the realization of the expected cooperation goals.The discussion of opportunistic behavior in cooperation has become a hot topic in academia.However,the following shortcomings remain in existing studies.First,existing studies have not explored the manifestations of opportunistic behavior in the context of cooperative innovation enough,and lack of measurement tools.Second,most of the existing studies are carried out at the enterprise level,ignoring the opportunistic behavior of people at the enterprise boundary.Third,the job roles of boundary spanners are different from those of ordinary employees,but scholars have not paid attention to how their special role affects opportunistic behavior.Fourth,scholars lack to explore the mechanism of opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners,and there are blind spots in understanding of this behavior.Fifth,the cooperative governance mechanism between enterprises has been proven to affect the opportunistic behavior of enterprises,but there has been no research on whether it affects the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners.Based on the above research deficiencies,this study expands the research background and level of opportunistic behaviors,and discusses the manifestations,measurement scales,influencing factors,production mechanism and boundary conditions of the behavior with the research theme of "opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners in cooperative innovation".The main work carried out in this study is as follows:(1)Conceptual model construction and scale development of opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation.This part mainly obtains first-hand data through in-depth interview,and analyzes the textual data by applying grounded theory.Based on the text data analysis process of open coding,principal coding and selective coding,a conceptual model of the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation is constructed.The results of qualitative analysis show that there are six forms of opportunism in enterprise cooperative innovation: knowledge concealing,knowledge stealing,evasion of responsibility,distortion of information,violation of agreement and self-preference,and several specific forms under each category.Based on the conceptual model obtained from qualitative analysis and the maturity scale in relevant literature,this study developed the scale of opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation,including 6 dimensions and 29 items.The scale has been applied in the subsequent empirical research,which shows good reliability and validity.(2)The extraction and analysis of factors influencing the opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation.This part is carried out at the same time as(1).Through the qualitative analysis process based on grounded theory,this study extracts two factors that influence the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation--organizational loyalty and Guanxi In order to analyze the impact of organizational loyalty and Guanxi on the opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners,this study reviewed relevant literature,combined with the role theory,the principle of differential pattern,the friend-businessman decision-making prototype,This paper successively analyzes the role activities of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation--the social relations of boundary spanners in workplace--the role ethics of boundary spanners in workplace(organizational loyalty and Guanxi),and deduces two research propositions: Proposition one,organizational loyalty will promote the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation;Second,Guanxi will inhibit the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in cooperative innovation.(3)Research on the influence mechanism of organizational loyalty and Guanxi on the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners in enterprise cooperative innovation.In order to test the two research propositions proposed in(2),and further explore the influence mechanism of organizational loyalty and Guanxi on the opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners.Based on role theory and theory of reasoned action,this study constructed an influence mechanism model and collected 426 questionnaires.PLS 4 software was used to test the research model and hypothesis.The research results show that organizational loyalty can improve the opportunistic behavior attitude,subjective norms and intentions of boundary spanners.Proposition 1 proposed in(2)has been confirmed.Guanxi can inhibit the opportunistic behavior attitude,subjective norms and intentions of boundary spanners.Proposition 2 proposed in(2)has been confirmed.In addition,the results also show that organizational loyalty and Guanxi can influence opportunistic behavior intention through influencing opportunistic behavior attitude and subjective norms respectively.By comparing the research results,it is found that organizational loyalty plays a greater role in improving opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms than Guanxi,which indicates that organizational loyalty plays a greater role in the evaluation stage of opportunistic behaviors of border spanners.However,the direct promotion effect of organizational loyalty on opportunistic behavior intention is smaller than the direct inhibition effect of Guanxi,which indicates that when there is a space for opportunistic behavior,the individual’s decision on whether to adopt the behavior is more influenced by Guanxi.Through comparison,it is also found that compared with opportunistic behavior attitude,subjective norms of opportunistic behavior have a more significant impact on opportunistic behavior intention.This shows that subjective norms play a more important role in the rational decision-making process of opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners,which is also in line with the logic of Chinese people,that is,they attach great importance to how others view them.(4)The moderating effect of relationship governance and contract utilization on the rational decision-making of opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners in cooperative innovation.Based on the theory of social exchange and the theory of transaction cost economics,this study proposes that relationship governance plays a regulating role in the production stage of opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms of boundary spanners,and inhibits the emergence of opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms.Contract utilization plays a regulating role in the final stage of opportunistic behaviors,inhibiting the occurrence of behaviors.This regulatory effect is tested at the same time as(3).The results showed that relationship governance cannot inhibit the promotion effect of organizational loyalty on opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms,but it can improve the inhibitory effect of Guanxi between boundary spanners on opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms.This showed that the relationship governance between enterprises and Guanxi between boundary spanners can both play a cooperative governance effect.This confirms that relationship governance can play a "proactive role" in the decision-making of opportunistic behavior of boundary spanner.Secondly,the study also found that contract utilization can inhibit the promotion effect of opportunistic behavior intention on opportunistic behaviors,which confirms the "precipice" effect of contract use.This study expands the research background and level of opportunistic behaviors,carries out research in the context of cooperative innovation between enterprises,and focuses the research perspective from the enterprise level to the micro level of individual boundary spanners,which provides a richer theoretical basis for understanding and managing opportunistic behavior.Secondly,this study uses the method of qualitative research to fully analyze the manifestations of opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners in cooperative innovation,and develops a research scale for subsequent research.Thirdly,this study reveals the differential impact of organizational loyalty and Guanxi of boundary spanners on opportunistic behaviors in cooperative innovation,and once again confirms the problem of "loyalty(organizational loyalty)and righteousness(Guanxi)dilemma" that has existed in China since ancient times.The introduction of local concepts and the discussion of local issues are also an attempt to localize management research.Thirdly,this study unveils the "black box" of the mechanism of opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners in cooperative innovation,and provides guidance for enterprise managers to intervene in the behaviors of boundadry spanners.Finally,this study examines the influence of inter-firm cooperative governance on the decision-making process of individual opportunistic behavior of boundary spanners,which not only confirms the influence of inter-firm governance on individual behavior,but also provides a theoretical basis for the rational formulation,allocation and implementation of formal and informal governance mechanisms of enterprises.