外部创新源对创新绩效的影响研究:吸收能力的调节作用

The Impact of External Innovation Sources on Enterprise's Innovation Performance:The Moderating Role of Absorptive Capacity

在知识经济全球化时代,外部创新源在企业创新过程中充当重要角色。基于此,本文构建了外部创新源规模、外部创新源关系质量和外部创新源关系稳定性对企业创新绩效影响的模型,探讨了吸收能力在上述过程中的调节作用,以山东、贵州和江苏三地188个企业为调查对象,检验了相关假设。实证结果表明,外部创新源规模、外部创新源关系质量和外部创新源关系稳定性均对企业的创新绩效带来正向影响;潜在吸收能力、实现吸收能力仅在外部创新源规模、外部创新关系质量与创新绩效中分别发挥正向调节作用;并存的潜在吸收能力和实现吸收能力在上述三种关系中可以联合发挥正向调节作用。

In the contemporary ear of knowledge economy globalization, knowledge flows across different enter- prises became more and more fast, the traditional innovation model characterized with strict control in the internal innovation process cannot meet the rapid needs of product development and technology development, more and more external innovation sources began to act as the ＂innovation reservoir＂ in the innovation process. Based on this background, this article discussed the relationship between external innovation sources and innovation performance and how absorptive capacity affected these relationships. Firstly this article briefly introduced theoretical basis from three different aspects, resource-based view, knowl- edge-based view and transaction cost theory, and reviewed and combed past literature related with open innovation, external innovation sources, absorptive capacity and innovation performance at home and abroad, thus formed a pre- liminary research thought on this basis. Subsequently, drawing lessons from previous studies, this article explored the relationship between external innovation sources and innovation performance from three dimensions respectively, that is to say to explore the relationship between external innovation sources scale, the relationship quality with ex- ternal innovation sources, the relationship stability with external innovation sources and innovation performance. Further, this paper introduced the concept of absorptive capacity, including potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity, and explored how these two absorptive capacities moderated the relationship discussed before, thus our conceptual model and research hypothesis formed through further refinement and extension. Finally, 188 samples collected from Shandong province, Guizhou province and Jiangsu province through questionnaires and emails helped us to test the research hypotheses one by one. The main conclusions and management implications drawn from this article included ： （ 1 ） the scale of external innovation sources, the relationship quality with external innovation source and the relationship stability with exter- nal innovation source relationship positively influence innovation performance because they could supplement extra valuable knowledge resources to companies. Thus enterprises can obtain more valuable and stable innovation re- sources and knowledge flow through establishing high quality relationship with them, and keeping more collaborations with external innovation sources, maintaining a long relationship with them, so as to improve innovation perform- ance. （2） the potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity could positively moderated the relation- ship between the scale of external innovation sources, the relationship quality with external innovation source and in- novation performance respectively; Potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity jointly moderated the relationship between the three aspects of external innovation sources and innovation performance. Therefore, en- terprises should improve its potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity based on the collaborations with external innovation sources, it will actively help enterprises to digest, convert and utilize innovation resources and knowledge obtained from external innovation sources. Improving absorptive capacity helped enterprises to dra- matically improve innovation performance in the same condition of external innovation sources. However, it＇s very significant to notice that the potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity do not positively modera- ted the relationship between the relationship stability with external innovation sources and innovation performance respectively, bat they could jointly moderate the above relationship.