Impact Of Firm’s Knowledge Characteristics On The Centrality Of Collaboration Network

With the deepening of global economic integration and the construction of innovation ecosystem,the degree of information and resources exchange between entities is increasing,and embedded collaboration networks are becoming an effective way for sustainable development of firms.Specifically,the central location of the collaboration networks brings rich innovation resources and opportunities for firms,and is an important engine for firms to maintain core competitive advantages and achieve technological improvement.The academic community widely believes that firm’s knowledge recombination ability profoundly affects its subsequent network embedding behavior,and how to effectively access knowledge and integrate knowledge to move to the central location of the collaboration networks has become one of the hot issue in the academic community.This paper integrates knowledge-based view,social network theory and knowledge search theory to conceptualize corporate R&D collaboration as a knowledge sharing process.Based on the two stages of knowledge sharing,this thesis examines the knowledge reasons for centrality of corporate collaboration networks.In the knowledge access stage,this paper incorporates the social network and knowledge network into the same research framework,and clarifies the impacts of firm’s knowledge discrete characteristics(diversity and uniqueness)in the two-mode network to centrality of the collaboration network.In the knowledge integration stage,this paper clarifies the moderating effect of knowledge relationship characteristics(complexity and proximity)on the relationship between knowledge discrete characteristics in the two-mode network and centrality of the collaboration network.In addition,this paper uses the patent data of the global new energy vehicle industry from 2000 to 2018 and the zero inflation negative binomial regression model to verify the reasons of the above two stages.The results show that:(1)firm’s knowledge diversity in the two-mode network can significantly enhance centrality of the collaboration network;firm’s knowledge uniqueness in the two-mode network has an inverted U-shaped effect on centrality of the collaboration network.(2)The knowledge complexity negatively regulates firm’s knowledge diversity in the two-mode network on centrality of the collaboration network.At the same time,the knowledge complexity also negatively regulates firm’s knowledge uniqueness in the two-mode network on centrality of the collaboration network.(3)The knowledge proximity positively regulates firm’s knowledge diversity in the two-mode network on centrality of thecollaboration network,while the knowledge proximity negatively regulates firm’s knowledge uniqueness in the two-mode network on centrality of the collaboration network.This study provides a theoretical basis for how firm can choose partners and take effective measures to facilitate knowledge transfer and improve centrality of its collaboration network.