“熟”能生“巧”吗? 重复联盟与焦点企业创新的倒U形关系研究

“Familiarity” Makes “Perfect”? Inverted U-shape Relationship Between Alliance Partner Repeatedness and Enterprise Innovation

重复联盟是企业重要的外部组织创新,也是焦点企业建构联盟组合实现交互效应的具体形式.人们常说"熟能生巧",重复联盟导致的"熟"能否产生技术创新的"巧"?本文在跨组织规范与联盟关系理论基础上,考察了重复联盟与焦点企业创新间的关系,检验了联盟控制与行业环境动态性内外两方面影响因素在其中扮演的角色,并对成都、重庆和西安等地区132家高科技企业调研数据进行了实证研究.结果表明:重复联盟与焦点企业创新具有倒U形关系,焦点企业联盟控制在重复联盟与企业创新的关系中具有显著的调节作用,但行业环境动态性在上述关系中的调节作用并不显著.适度的重复联盟有助于企业创新,过低或过高的重复联盟都会导致创新绩效的降低.为确保重复的作用显著,焦点企业应该注重提升其联盟控制能力.研究结论从联盟组合交互效应与联盟管理两个视角推动创新理论的拓展,对我国高科技企业通过联盟战略实现创新的管理实践具有重要启示.

Repeated alliance is an important external organizational innovation of enterprises, as well as the specific form for the focal enterprise to construct alliance portfolio in order to realize interaction effect. As people often say ＂fa- miliarity makes perfect＂ , it tried to find whether ＂familiarity＂ caused by repeated alliances can produce ＂perfect＂ em- bodied by technological innovation. By integrating interorganization routines and alliance relationship view, it examined the relationship between repeated alliances and focal enterprise innovation, and the moderating effect of both internal factor of alliance control and external factor of environment dynamism. Based on the survey data of 132 high-tech enter- prises in Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi＇an, the empirical results indicate an inverted U-shape relationship between alli- ance partner repeatedness and enterprise innovations, and that alliance control makes the inverted U-shape relationship steeper. However, the moderating effect of environment dynamics is not significant. Moderate alliance repeatedness helps enterprises to achieve innovation, but too low or too high alliance repeatedness lead to the decrease of innovation performance. Thus, the focal enterprises should try to promote alliance control ability to ensure repeatedness effect. The conclusion promotes innovation theory development from two perspectives of alliance portfolio interaction and alli- ance management, and has important implications for China＇s high-tech enterprises to achieve innovative through alli- ance strategy.