国际化导向、国际知识吸收能力与国际机会识别关系研究

Research on the Relationship Between International Orientation, International Knowledge Absorption Capacity and International Opportunity Identification

在企业国际化背景下,高层管理者如何有效识别国际机会以推动企业的国际化发展,这是一个值得研究的重要问题。基于国际化导向的视角,通过研究国际化导向、国际知识吸收能力等因素与国际机会识别间关系来探究国际机会识别的内在过程与机理,并基于228份国际化企业高层管理者的调查问卷进行实证研究发现:国际化导向显著促进国际机会识别;国际知识吸收能力及其子维度中介作用于国际化导向与国际机会识别;网络导向正向调节国际化导向与国际知识获取能力、国际知识消化能力、国际知识应用能力的关系,但在国际化导向与国际知识转换能力关系中的调节作用不显著;网络导向正向调节国际化导向与国际机会识别的关系。

The development of economic globalization and the belt and road initiative have brought great opportunities for the international operation of Chinese enterprises. As the starting point and core of enterprise internationalization,international opportunity identification plays an important role in the process of enterprise internationalization. Therefore,the problem of international opportunity identification has become a hot topic attracting scholars at home and abroad.How can enterprise top managers effectively identify international opportunities in a transnational context? At present,some scholars have discussed the problem of international opportunity identification from the perspective of relational network, international knowledge and international experience, but ignored the role of international orientation in international opportunity identification. International orientation refers to the willingness of top managers to take active and farsighted actions in order to achieve the international market goals of the enterprise. The top managers of enterprises with strong international orientation tend to regard the international market rather than just the domestic market as the target market of the enterprise, so as to actively carry out international opportunity identification activities to promote the internationalization process of the enterprise. Thus it can be seen that international orientation is an important antecedent factor affecting international opportunity identification. However, as international opportunity identification is an opportunity identification behavior based on transnational situations, domestic enterprise top managers may not be able to directly and effectively identify international opportunities due to their limited understanding of foreign markets. In other words, international orientation should influence international opportunity identification through some intermediate mechanism. However, the existing literature has not yet explained the internal process of how internationally-oriented top managers can effectively identify international opportunities. What is the mechanism of international orientation on international opportunity identification? This is an important question worth studying.Studies have suggested that international knowledge plays a central role in international opportunity identification.However, due to the lack of international knowledge, the top managers of traditional domestic enterprises face the restriction of lack of knowledge in international opportunity identification. Therefore, how to effectively acquire and use the international knowledge has become the key for the top managers to identify international opportunities. According to the theory of absorptive capacity, the international knowledge absorptive capacity of enterprise top managers helps them to acquire, digest, transform and apply related international knowledge, and thus plays an important role in the relationship between international orientation and international opportunity identification. In addition, according to the social network theory, network orientation helps top managers to actively build and maintain various relational networks, so as to effectively acquire and utilize relevant international knowledge by using the relational network, and then effectively identify international opportunities. Therefore, network orientation plays an important role in the relationship between international orientation and international knowledge absorption capacity, as well as between international orientation and international opportunity identification. Therefore, based on the perspective of international orientation, by introducing the intermediary mechanism of international knowledge absorption capacity, and the regulation mechanism of network orientation, this research proposes a conceptual model and its related hypotheses to explain the internal mechanism of international orientation on international opportunity identification.Taking the top managers of international enterprises(that is, the top management team) as the research object. Based on 228 questionnaires of top managers of international enterprises, this research adopts the method of combining hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation model analysis to test the hypothesis of the relationship between variables. The results showed that:(1) International orientation has a significant positive effect on international opportunity identification;(2) International knowledge absorption capacity and its sub-dimensions play an important mediating role in the relationship between international orientation and international opportunity identification;(3) Network orientation plays a positive regulating role in the relationship between international orientation and international opportunity identification;(4) Network orientation plays a positive regulating role in the relationship between international orientation and international knowledge acquisition capacity, international knowledge digestion capacity and international knowledge application capacity, but its regulating role in the relationship between international orientation and international knowledge transformation capacity is not significant.Moreover, international opportunity identification is only the first step in the internationalization process. Therefore,it is hoped that subsequent scholars can conduct further research on the development and utilization of international opportunity identification, that is, subsequent scholars can study the internal process of how enterprises integrate resources to build corresponding operational capabilities from the perspectives of "capacity building" and "resource bricolage", so as to seize opportunities for international operation.