The Mechanism Of Integration Of Knowledge-intensive Service Activities, Role In The Manufacture Of Technical Capacity

KISA are the knowledge-intensive service activities that firms undertake in conjunction with external or internal experts to build capability in the multiple areas needed for sustained innovative activity (Fernandez, 2005). They include R&D service, IT service, engineering service, management consulting service, finance and accounting service, marketing service, legal service and human resource management service. KISA are the carriers of knowledge and virtually they are the engagement processes of the firm's employees with external or internal providers of services and inputs. Attentions to KISA can be traced back to KIBS research, and the scholars here have sought to achieve a better understanding of the nature of innovation processes through the study of the use by firms of knowledge intensive service activities. In the recent years, the research on service innovation has gradually put an increasing focus on KISA.However, there are limited studies of the contributions of the service sector to manufacturing sector, especially at the micro level for a long period. Based on this situation, this paper explores the effect mechanisms that the service sector contributes to technological capabilities integration from the angle of knowledge-intensive service activities, in order to direct the manufacturing companies to build the system of technological capabilities integration more efficiently.Firstly, based on former research, this paper summarized KISA's definition, typology and prevalent research focuses, namely integration, product life cycle and company life cycle. Then, the author also made a summary on the definition and components of technological capabilities and summarized the research of capabilities integration from personnel, organization and physical system.Second, based on the relevant literature, this paper analyzed the meaning, internal mechanism and external manifestation of technological capabilities integration, and thus put forward that technological capabilities integration is a dynamic process composed of 6 phases, namely knowledge identification, knowledge acquisition, knowledge share, knowledge learning, knowledge application and knowledge reconstruction. Then, this paper analyzed the influence of different activity characteristics on technological capabilities integration, and concluded that knowledge tacitness is negatively relevant with integration performance whereas interaction frequency, interaction breadth, interaction depth and knowledge complementarities are positively relevant with integration performance. Moreover, this paper respectively analyzed the significantly different influence of Technology KISA (T-KISA) and non-Technology KISA (non T-KISA) on capabilities integration performance. Finally, the author also used a detailed case to validate some of the research conclusions put forward in Chapter Three.Thirdly, this paper also did a data analysis of the performance factors of technological capabilities integration. This paper identified 6 significant factors of integration performance and calculated the influence degrees of the different factors to the performance of human resource capabilities integration, organization capabilities integration, physical system capabilities integration and coupling mechanism integration. Moreover, the survey results showed that there are some significant differences of the influence of the two different kinds of KISA on the performance of human resource capabilities integration, organization capabilities integration, physical system capabilities integration and coupling mechanism integration. The results basically approve the hypotheses promoted.At the end of the thesis, some suggestions are respectively proposed from enterprise layer and project layer. The summary is given, as well as the research prospect of the future.