企业集团内部创新架构与创新绩效

Internal Innovation Structure and Innovation Performance of Enterprise Groups

集团化经营是企业应对复杂多变环境的关键举措,集团内部组织架构直接关系企业集团成功实践。集团分散式创新架构强调去中心化的个体自发参与创新活动,而集中式创新架构则由个别节点开展封闭的创新活动。虽然一些知名企业集团已经从封闭的集中式创新走向开放的分散式创新,但既有研究关于两种集团内部创新架构的创新绩效研究不足,导致难以指导企业集团创新实践。为此,本研究从集团微观组织角度识别集团创新架构特征,并基于2007—2017年A股上市公司进行实证检验,重点讨论企业集团创新绩效。研究发现:企业集团分散式创新对于组织创新绩效更有利,包括组织的专利申请和专利授权绩效;增强企业集团盈利能力和国家创新驱动政策实施可以削弱集中式创新负面影响;企业集团分散式创新对于东部地区企业的组织创新绩效影响更明显,即发达地区更需要注重集团内部分散式创新;集团创新架构会通过影响创新策略和产品市场竞争力而影响创新绩效,具体表现为集团分散式创新更加有利于实质性创新和提升产品市场竞争力,进而显著增加分散式创新绩效。本研究表明,企业集团不仅要重视与外部组织开放协作,更要重视内部创新架构设计,构建成员企业积极参与的内部分散式创新网络。本研究丰富了企业集团组织研究,拓展了企业集团创新架构以及创新绩效研究。

Collectivization management is a key measure for an enterprise to cope with complex and dynamic business environment.The success of the enterprise group’s practice is directly correlated with the internal organizational structure of the group.On the one hand,enterprise groups weaken the organizational boundaries of member enterprises and improve exchanges and collaboration among different members.They also conduct innovative activities that are challenging for individual enterprises to carry out,which helps to foster high-quality innovation.Enterprise groups,on the other hand,have not completely eliminated the organizational boundary among members,and even increased the principal-agent level among members within the group,and even gotten to the point where they were“gathering but not organizing,managing but not controlling”.Therefore,the proper internal organization structure of the group is crucial.At present,group innovation can be categorized as decentralized and centralized innovation in terms of organizational structure.Among them,the decentralized innovation of the group emphasizes that decentralized individuals voluntarily participate in innovation activities,while the centralized innovation is carried out by individual nodes to carry out closed innovation activities.Under the centralized innovation,the principal and agent of innovative activities are more distinct,which improving the efficiency of resource allocation.The disadvantage of centralized innovation is that individual innovation subjects are more prone to carry out rent-seeking behavior.Decentralized innovation places a strong emphasis on knowledge sharing among member enterprises in the process of innovation,which brings information advantage to group innovation.In a decentralized innovation environment,member firms view group innovation from a more open and strategic perspective and actively participate in group innovation.Decentralized innovation has the drawback of potentially reducing the function of internal capital markets The existing research on innovation performance of the two group innovation organizations is insufficient,which makes it difficult to guide the theoretical research in practice.Therefore,this paper focuses on the performance of group centralized innovation and decentralized innovation.This study identifies the characteristics of group innovative organizational structure from the perspective of group micro-organization,and conducts empirical test based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017.The main research conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)the decentralized innovation of enterprise groups is more beneficial to the innovation performance of organizations,including the performance of patent application and patent authorization;(2)the adjustment effect test shows that strengthening the profitability of enterprise groups and the implementation of national innovation policies can weaken the negative impact of centralized innovation;(3)the group test shows that the decentralized innovation of enterprise groups has a more obvious impact on the organizational innovation performance of enterprises in the eastern region,that is,the developed regions need to pay more attention to the decentralized innovation within the group;(4)the innovation structure of the group will affect the innovation performance by influencing the innovation strategy and product market competitiveness.The specific performance is that the group’s decentralized innovation is more conducive to substantive innovation and improving the product market competitiveness,consequently significantly increasing the decentralized innovation performance.The robustness test continues to verify the conclusion of this paper.This study shows that enterprise groups should focus on designing internal innovation organizational structures as well as external open collaboration with external organizations.Enterprise groups should also build an internal decentralized innovation network in which member enterprises actively participate.This study enriches the organizational research on enterprise groups and extends the study of the innovative structure and performance of enterprise groups.