团队稳定性是否提高了企业二元创新?——基于研发人员合作关系的实证研究

Does the Stability of R&D Team Improve Dual Innovation?:Evidence from the R&D Team

虽然有较多研究考察了不同类型的人力资本对企业创新的影响,但主要聚焦于企业如何从外界雇用优质的人才资源或者留住高绩效的研发人员,较少有研究关注研发人员之间的合作模式以及合作稳定性对企业后续创新的影响。基于2007—2018年中国高科技上市企业内部研发人员之间的合作关系,文章从研发团队层面考察了团队稳定性对企业二元创新的影响。研究发现,研发团队稳定性显著提高了企业创新绩效。然而,研发团队稳定性对企业创新的影响主要体现于对利用式创新的影响,对探索式创新并没有显著的影响作用。同时,研发团队中发明家高管和新进入研发人员在团队稳定性和企业创新之间起到正向调节作用,即研发团队中发明家高管和新进入企业的研发人员越多,团队稳定性对企业创新的正向影响作用越强。

In view of the importance of innovation to firms,many scholars have examined the factors that affect firm innovation from different perspectives.Among them,human capital has a vital impact on innovation performance.Most of the research focuses on the channel in which firms need to hire or retain high quality human capital.However,few studies focus on the cooperation mode of internal inventors,such as the influence of the stability of R&D team on the subsequent innovation performance.Moreover,scholars have yet to agree on the impact of the R&D team stability on firm innovation,and present controversial paradoxes.On the one hand,some scholars point out that team stability promotes firm innovation in a variety of ways,including facilitating the formation of a better cooperation model among members,increasing team security perception,and enhancing team cohesion.On the other hand,R&D team stability may also lead to team dullness in the dynamic external environment,forming a single innovation model,which is not conducive to the entry and renewal of diverse and heterogeneous knowledge and hinders innovation performance.The controversial conclusions above are due to two reasons.Firstly,existing research mainly focuses on the impact of team stability on overall innovation performance,ignoring the differences in the impact of team stability on different substantive types of innovation(i.e.,exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation).Secondly,existing studies have neglected to explore the moderating effects between team stability and firm innovation,such as the composition of team members(inventor manager)and newcomer inflows of human capital.In view of this,using the cooperative relationship and detailed patent data of inventors in the high-tech industries of Chinese listed firms from 2007 to 2018,the research construct the stability index of the R&D team and discuss the influence of R&D team stability on firm innovation.The results show that the stability of the R&D team significantly improves the innovation performance,and the R&D team stability has a stronger positive effect on exploitative innovation than exploratory innovation.In addition,the research also test the moderating role of inventor manager and newcomer inflows between R&D team stability and firm innovation,and the results suggest that the inventor manager and newcomer inflows play a positive moderating role between R&D team stability and firm innovation.Firstly,the research defines and measures the stability index of the R&D team and examines the impact of R&D team stability on firm innovation.Specifically,existing studies mainly focus on the impact factors of firm innovation from the perspective of enterprise-level or individual level,ignoring how to maximize the activation of human capital by optimizing the cooperation mode between team members.Secondly,the research focus on the partnerships between micro-inventors within firms.Existing research mainly focuses on the external cooperative relationship,including the cooperative relationship between firms,alliances and the impact of social networks on firm innovation,and few studies focus on the impact of internal R&D team stability on firm innovation performance.Thirdly,the research examine the difference in the impact of team stability on dual innovation.On the one hand,this research shows that R&D team stability can significantly improve subsequent innovation performance.On the other hand,the results show that the impact of R&D team stability on firm innovation is mainly reflected in exploitative innovation and has no significant impact on exploratory innovation.Given the conclusions of the research,R&D managers can reduce the loss of human capital,especially inventors with more abundant social capital.Besides,based on the different impacts of R&D team stability on dual innovation,R&D managers should also realize and re-examine whether the R&D team stability leads to excessive attention to exploitative innovation and neglect of exploratory innovation besides focusing on overall innovation.In addition,future research can further examine the influence of different types of human capital and stable cooperative relationships between cross-departmental employees on firm innovation or focus on the possible moderating role of different individual characteristics between R&D team stability and firm innovation.