国有企业技术并购对企业模糊前端创新绩效的影响

The Impact of Technology Mergers and Acquisitions by State-owned Enterprises on Firms'Fuzzy Front-end Innovation Performance

基于多维邻近理论,探索技术并购对企业模糊前端创新绩效的影响,以及并购双方地理距离与收购方生产链位置的调节作用。利用2009—2019年国有企业并购数据进行实证检验,结果表明:并购双方技术相似性对企业模糊前端创新绩效具有显著负向影响,技术互补性对企业模糊前端创新绩效具有显著正向影响;并购双方地理距离、收购方所处生产链位置正向调节技术相似性与企业模糊前端创新绩效的关系以及技术互补性与企业模糊前端创新绩效的关系。采用工具变量法、替换样本研究区间和GMM估计法进行内生性与稳健性检验发现,上述结论依然成立。结论有助于深化对国有企业技术并购与模糊前端创新关系的认识,从而为企业通过技术并购实现模糊前端创新提供实践启示。

State-owned enterprises(SOEs)are the main force in China's participation in international economic and the trade activities and implementation of the going-out strategy.In recent years,SOEs have continued to promote innovation to break through technological bottlenecks.At the fuzzy front-end stage,technology acquisitions allow high-tech firms to obtain a competitive advantage by quickly acquiring the latest external technology and product ideas.But some firms fail to achieve innovation and technological capability following technology acquisitions.It can be found that the introduction of new technological trajectories for firms through technology M&A and the generation of key core breakthrough technologies that have a fundamental impact on the competitive state of the market are key factors in the acquisition and maintenance of sustainable competitive advantages for firms.As the key to the successful output of breakthrough technologies lies in the performance of a firm's fuzzy front-end activities,the technology acquisitions taken by a firm at this stage determine the likelihood of technological innovation breakthrough and the ultimate success of the innovation.Following the multidimensional proximity theory,this paper explores the influence of technology acquisition on the fuzzy front-end innovation performance of state-owned high-tech firms in China.It selects the technology acquisitions of SOEs from 2009-2019 as the sample to analyze whether technology acquisitions effectively alleviate SOEs'innovation information dilemma,optimize SOEs'innovation resource allocation,and promote breakthrough innovation.It is concluded that firstly technological similarity between M&A parties has a significant negative impact on firms'fuzzy front-end innovation performance,while technological complementarity has a significant positive impact.Secondly,geographical distance and production chain location positively moderate the negative relationship between technological similarity and firms'fuzzy front-end innovation performance.Thirdly,the link between technological complementarity and firms'success in fuzzy front-end innovation is favorably moderated by geographic distance and production chain location.The conclusions remain valid after a number of robustness tests.The study highlights the following three aspects.Firstly,the degree of technical complementarity and similarity in the M&A process is crucial to the successful outcome of organizations'ground-breaking technological innovation.Firms'market power is achieved by the differentiated characteristics of breakthrough technology,and it serves as a foundation for enriching theories related to product market power in different innovation contexts.When it comes to new product development,acquirers and targets can ensure sustainable competitiveness only by keeping the appropriate correlation in the technology knowledge base.Therefore,when firms select potential targets in the pre-merger process,the targets'complementary technological innovation resources become the key technological identification elements.At the same time,combining internal and external knowledge can facilitate deep knowledge extraction and provide an increasingly effective knowledge resource for subsequent knowledge integration methods and tools.This assists firms in determining the direction of goods,processes and innovations.Secondly,according to the distance economy theory and multidimensional proximity theory,when firms make M&A decisions,they should select targets'technology fields by evaluating their own position in the production chain and combining the technology cost,research,development process,and innovation demand.Firms in higher production chains should break the original technological paradigm and use complementary resources to push the boundaries and achieve new product innovation from breakthrough new technologies.For similar resources,it is imperative to reduce development and input costs,break through the original technological knowledge framework and thinking inertia,and quickly open up new technological tracks.Thirdly,whenfirms are making M&A decisions and are geographically distant from each other,they can obtain new technological breakthroughs from complementary resources,providing an efficient path for sharing complementary knowledge resources.For similar technological resources,firms should break through the existing technology framework to generate ideas and new technologies so as to tackle the problems in the M&A integration process.In other words,technology acquisition enables the integration of external technological resources and alleviates the external pressures faced by SOEs in the process due to geographical proximity and different production chain locations.To a certain extent,this not only provides systematic decision support for the rational selection of target firms and the formulation of technology absorption strategy,but also provides a new idea for enterprises to choose the type of targets.In conclusion,this paper helps to deepen the understanding of SOEs'technology acquisition and new product development decisions.