Ambidextrous Organizational Culture,Contextual Ambidexterity and New Product Innovation: A Comparative Study of UK and Chinese High‐tech Firms

Contextual ambidexterity is of paramount importance for new product innovation and organizational success, particularly in high‐tech firms operating in a dynamic environment. Whilst it is recognized that contextual ambidexterity is grounded in organizational culture, existing research has not crystallized what kind of organizational culture enables contextual ambidexterity and consequently new product innovation. In this paper, drawing on data from 150 UK and 242 Chinese high‐tech firms, we conceptualize ambidextrous organizational culture as a higher‐order construct consisting of organizational diversity and shared vision, and examine its impacts on contextual ambidexterity and consequently on new product innovation outcomes. Using structural equation modelling, we find significant relationships between ambidextrous organizational culture, contextual ambidexterity and new product innovation outcomes; contextual ambidexterity mediates the relationship between ambidextrous organizational culture and new product innovation outcomes. Our findings also suggest that the above relationships are robust in the UK–China comparative research context, and that contextual ambidexterity and new product innovation outcomes are dependent on business unit level heterogeneity (i.e. ambidextrous organizational culture and research and development strength) rather than industry or cross‐cultural differences.     

Building Industry–University Research Centers: Some Strategic Considerations

This paper reviews the importance of industry–university relationships and the strategic considerations within the context of these partnerships in university research centers. We have identified several factors that are particularly important to industry in building relationships with university centers. These include: acquiring skills, knowledge and gaining access to university facilities; organizational cultures that are more organic; flexible university policies for intellectual property rights, patents and licenses; and the presence of champions. Firms also have explicit collaborative strategies for partnering with universities where firms can be segmented into three distinct clusters: Collegial Players, Aggressive Players and Targeted Players. Collegial Players are often large firms working with universities and university-sponsored consortia on topics of interest that have long-term value rather than promise immediate commercial opportunities. Aggressive Players are both large and small firms who employ university relationships specifically to develop and commercialize a wide range of marketable products and services. Targeted Players are often smaller firms, largely interested in using university relationships to address specific issues central to their business. We conclude by discussing key implications for both industry and universities.     

Technological Diversification: A Systematic Review of Antecedents,Outcomes and Moderating Effects

Technological diversification has been linked to a wide range of phenomena, including financial performance, innovation, product diversification and inter‐organizational relationships. This is the first systematic review of this literature and provides an overview of its historical development and conceptual foundations. It finds that the role of contingency factors impacting the positive relationship between technological diversification and financial performance needs further exploration. Also, it finds that the research on the links between technological diversification and inter‐organizational relationships requires consolidation. This paper suggests three avenues for further research. First, it sets out an agenda for identifying the antecedents of technological diversification. Second, it identifies contextual factors that could shape the relationship between technological diversification and performance. Third, it argues that technological diversification research must engage with contemporary technological and organizational developments such as digital organizations, open boundaries and networks.     

基于三方演化博弈的政产学研协同创新机制研究

政产学研协同创新是实施创新驱动，推动国家和区域经济发展的重要动力，然而企业牵头、高校参与的协同创新机制存在弊端。鉴于此，本文构建了政府引导、高校牵头、企业参与的协同创新三方演化博弈模型，分析了政产学研三方在协同创新过程中的策略选择，并用仿真分析研究了政产学研协同创新策略选择的影响因素。结果表明：政府、企业和高校受彼此参与意愿的影响程度不同；政府不同的激励机制对企业和高校的影响存在差异；企业对惩罚力度和收益分配更加敏感。     

Toward a Typology of Buyer–Supplier Relationships: A Study of the Computer Industry*

Buyer–supplier relationship typologies are useful analytical tools for purchasing managers in managing exchange relationships with suppliers and monitoring their purchasing portfolios. Existing buyer–supplier relationship typologies are mainly focused on either relational contents or power‐dependence and have limited empirical support for their performance implications. In this study, we developed an alternative buyer–supplier relationship typology that integrates both relational content and power‐dependence dimensions, resulting in four generic relationship types: market, power, autonomous‐link, and constrained‐link relationships. We then performed a longitudinal exploratory investigation of eight leading firms in the U.S. computer industry to explore the performance implications of the typology, using a combinatorial qualitative approach that leverages the strengths of case study research, content analysis, and quasi‐experimental design. The results suggest three theoretical propositions. First, the association between the type of buyer–supplier relationships and buyer firm performance varies such that constrained‐link relationships are superior in terms of operational efficiency while autonomous‐link relationships are superior in terms of product innovation. Second, the positive association between buyer–supplier relational contents (i.e., relationalism) and buyer firm operational efficiency is strengthened as the suppliers' dependence on the buyer firm increases. And finally, the positive association between buyer–supplier relationalism and buyer firm product innovation is weakened as the suppliers' dependence on the buyer firm increases.     

Inter‐organizational Cooperation and Environmental Change: Moderating Effects between Flexibility and Innovation Performance

The paper investigates the moderator effect of inter‐organizational cooperation in the relationship between workplace flexibility and innovation performance. This research question is important because innovation is dependent on the strategic integration of technological knowledge, requiring organizations to acquire new capabilities rapidly or to ensure the presence of knowledge that may be beyond existing internal capabilities. Inter‐organizational cooperation constitutes a relevant mechanism for a firm to increase its knowledge base concerning new products and processes. High‐cooperation firms may have more opportunities to take advantage of flexibility for innovation performance because it facilitates the access and dispersion of knowledge within the firm. We test the research hypotheses in a sample of manufacturing and service firms. The results contribute to the literature on flexibility and innovation because they demonstrate that inter‐organizational cooperation moderates the relationship between flexibility and innovation performance. We discuss the implications of these results for future research and managerial practice.     

Strategic Network Orchestration in Emerging Markets: China's Catch‐up in the High‐Speed Train Industry

Transitioning from catch‐up in production to catch‐up in innovation capabilities is essential to emerging market firms (EMFs) achieving internationalization and a competitive advantage. While some EMFs are now positioned among the world's most advanced firms, many struggle to become independent innovators. Thus, understanding how EMFs can develop internal absorptive capacity and progress towards catching up in innovation capabilities remains important. Our study seizes this research opportunity and develops a network‐based explanation of catch‐up, which complements existing technological and organizational explanations. Specifically, we address the question of ‘How does the orchestration of collaborative networks enable EMFs to catch up in production and innovation capabilities?’ by describing an important yet under‐researched process of strategic network orchestration and showcasing the dynamic interdependencies between network orchestration and organizational learning. Our study provides a detailed account of Chinese high‐speed train (HST) development from 1990 to 2020 and opens the possibility for future research on network orchestration in emerging market contexts. This provides EMF managers with a set of actionable network orchestration mechanisms that can be used when designing and purposefully managing their strategic nets of domestic and foreign partners.     

Cooperation and Knowledge Transfer within Buyer–Supplier Relationships: The Moderating Properties of Trust,Relationship Duration and Supplier Performance*

This paper examines the effect of relational factors on knowledge transfer within strategic buyer–supplier exchange. Prior research examining inter‐firm knowledge transfer has focused almost exclusively on horizontal forms of governance such as strategic alliances and joint ventures, whilst research on vertical forms, such as buyer–supplier relationships, is limited. We test the effect of four important relational properties: cooperation, trust, relationship duration and supplier performance. Quantitative data, gathered from 104 UK manufacturing firms in eight industry sectors, are used to analyse the hypothesized relationships through a moderated hierarchical regression model. Our study provides support for the importance of considering relational factors in the transfer of knowledge at the inter‐organizational level. In particular, the results indicate that knowledge transfer is positively influenced by the extent of cooperation, but that this relationship is moderated by the level of trust and the performance of the supplier firm. Managerial implications for these findings and future directions for research are then offered.     

基于ERGM的协同创新网络形成影响因素实证研究

以电信产业申请并授权的合作专利为数据基础,从社会网络视角,构建企业、大学和研究院所间协同创新网络,并识别影响组织间协同创新网络形成的内生网络构型,以及外生节点属性两个维度的影响因素。基于指数随机图模型(ERGM),实证分析了这些因素对协同创新网络形成的影响程度。研究表明:协同创新网络是组织协同关系社会化特征的体现,其形成受内生因素和外生因素的共同作用;协同创新网络中,边结构表现出显著的稀疏效应,网络多涌现易于形成资源共享与交换的星型结构和三角结构;网络中组织的合作开放度和区域同配性,能够增加网络节点间的连接概率,而组织的协同创新能力与组织类型同配对网络中新合作关系的形成,并没有表现出显著的促进作用。     

Technology transfer: Research to commercial product

One of the most admired aspects of U.S. technology has been the ability to assimilate and commercialize new science and technology. In light of the rising international competition, there has been new emphasis placed on the commercialization of U.S. science and technology developed in the federal laboratories and universities and indpendent research laboratories. While federal research and development remains the focus of the majority of these laboratories, an additional goal is to facilitate the exploitation of the discoveries, patents, and copyrights developed at the laboratories.The transfer of technology to industrial partners and users is a complex task for a federal laboratory. Since the interaction with industry, as well as market knowledge and assessment of the needs of business users are beyond the charter of a federal research laboratory or university, new organizational mechanisms are required in order to obtain full commercial value from the laboratories' efforts. A study was instituted to examine selected organizational and policy arrangements for achieving the optimum commercial value from the science and technology research at federal or independent research and development laboratories or university laboratories sponsored and funded by the U.S. Government.     

Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the ‘typical’ article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health‐care sector, using case‐study methods within field‐based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK‐centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.     

Time for space: A narrative review of research on organizational spaces

This paper presents an integrated framework for studying organizational spaces. It suggests that existing research can be classed into three categories: studies of space as distance; studies of space as the materialization of power relations; and studies of space as experience. These approaches are drawn together using Henri Lefebvre's theory of spatial production to argue that an adequate understanding of organizational spaces would investigate how they are practised, planned and imagined. Moreover, an adequate theory of space would account for multiple spatial levels, or scales. To illustrate the potential of the synthetic framework, a reading of three exemplary studies of multiple organizational spaces, from social anthropology and economic geography, is presented. The paper concludes by presenting a research agenda that indicates how data collection and analysis in established fields such as employee relations and international business might become more ‘space sensitive’ by integrating such theorized cross‐scale analysis.     

CEO proactiveness,innovation, and firm performance

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are essential in driving firm innovation. However, despite existing research on CEO personality characteristics and firm innovation and performance, we know relatively little about how personality characteristics reflecting anticipatory action and strong outcome-oriented components, such as proactiveness, shape firm innovation and performance. We explore the relationship between CEO proactiveness and three facets of organizational innovation, as well as its impact on firm performance. We suggest that CEO proactiveness is manifested in different network-building, problem-solving, and feedback-seeking behaviors with different implications for exploratory innovation, exploitative innovation, and organizational ambidexterity, and that its effect on firm performance is partially mediated by organizational ambidexterity. By examining the influence of this important CEO personality characteristic on key firm strategic choices and performance, we extend research on strategic leadership and firm innovation and performance.     

Process Innovation Costs in Supply Networks: A Synthesis

This paper provides a synthesis of the literature on the costs incurred by organizations that develop, adopt and use inter‐organizational process innovations in supply networks. A review of the literature in this area suggests that innovation costs influence the pattern of adoption. There is, however, a lack of consensus about what these innovation costs entail. Based on a review of innovation literature in the area of information systems, this paper develops an integrative framework of inter‐organizational process innovation costs. The framework identifies six broad categories of costs (both tangible and intangible) that map onto different stages of organizational innovation: development and initiation costs associated with the generation of an innovation; switching costs and the cost of capital associated with the acceptance stage; and implementation and relational costs associated with implementation. The framework serves not only to organize the existing literature but also to provide the impetus for future research into the role that different categories of costs play in shaping inter‐organizational process innovation in supply networks.     

协同创新、知识溢出的演化博弈机制研究

基于演化博弈理论,研究企业、大学和科研机构间协同创新过程的"演化稳定策略"。通过设计知识共享模型分析知识投入与知识溢出对协同创新的影响并进行仿真检验。研究认为,长期的协同创新中"合作"策略是参与方采用的"演化稳定策略";当参与方数量不同时,小群体一方率先实现"合作"策略稳定,群体数量相近时双方采用"合作"策略的收敛速度趋于一致;增加知识溢出有利于提高协同创新效率与稳定性。在理论上解释了协同创新博弈的合作策略稳定性,为产学研合作的机制设计提供决策参考。     

Innovation management in context: environment, organization and performance

Several decades of research into innovation management have failed to provide clear and consistent findings or coherent advice to managers. In this paper, I argue that this is because innovation management 'best practice' is contingent on a range of factors, and that we need better characterizations of the technological and market contingencies which affect the opportunity for, and constraints on, innovation. I review research on innovation together with relevant studies from organizational behaviour and strategic management, and develop a model which may help to guide future innovation research on the relationships between environmental contingencies, organization configurations and performance. I identify uncertainty and complexity as the key environmental contingencies that influence organizational structure and management processes for innovation.     

Voluntary Work‐related Technology Use during Non‐work Time: A Narrative Synthesis of Empirical Research and Research Agenda

The Internet and mobilization of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have made non‐manual work increasingly portable and remotely accessible. As a result, a considerable number of employees use their ICTs to engage in work‐related tasks during designated non‐work time, even without contractual obligation. However, existing research on such voluntary work‐related ICT use remains fragmented and spread across disciplines. The authors conducted a narrative review of 56 studies to identify themes in existing research, synthesize the evidence base and identify gaps in understanding. They identify five themes: (1) Social‐normative organizational context, (2) Job‐related characteristics and work processes, (3) Person characteristics, (4) Designated non‐work time and well‐being, and (5) Empowerment/Enslavement Paradox. A conceptual model of voluntary ICT use is developed by integrating the identified themes with existing organizational research, outlining the relationships between the identified themes and voluntary ICT use. The discussion emphasizes the need for more conceptual clarity on voluntary ICT use and related constructs, and for the integration of different disciplines and methodological approaches to advance knowledge in the field. The authors further identify person‐centred research as a critical future avenue to explore different ICT user types. Additionally, more research into the mechanisms and moderating influences regarding voluntary ICT use and its outcomes is considered advisable to advance knowledge on the Empowerment/Enslavement Paradox and its potential resolution. The paper concludes with preliminary implications to inform practice, addressing the need for employers to provide control over voluntary ICT use and employees enacting this control.     

Tolerance for Failure and Incentives for Collaborative Innovation

Most organizations employ collaborative teams to manage innovation projects. Although the use of collaborative innovation teams is a good starting point, an organization's ability to innovate can be enhanced by managing risk‐taking behavior through monetary incentive schemes and through an organizational culture that tolerates failure. This article reports the results of two controlled experiments aimed at understanding how tolerance for failure and incentives impact the decisions of individuals engaged in a collaborative innovation initiative. A key element of our experiments is the notion of endogenous project risk, which we define as the explicit link between resources allocated to a project and the likelihood of project success. We observe that when penalties are low, the amount of risk an individual assumes is fairly insensitive to the rewards that are offered. In an analogous result, when individuals make decisions alone (rather than collaboratively), higher tolerance for failure does little to increase the amount of risk an individual is willing to take. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of implicit incentives that are created as a result of project and organizational characteristics.     

The soft side of knowledge transfer partnerships between universities and small to medium enterprises: an exploratory study to understand process improvement

Abstract

The study explores the soft side of knowledge transfer partnerships between universities and small to medium enterprises (SMEs), a topic which is often neglected in the knowledge management literature. The aim of this paper is to uncover the issues which emerge during formation of a partnership between heterogeneous organizations and universities. In addition, the study unfolds the criticalities of typical process improvement capability that supports the knowledge transfer partnerships between universities and SMEs. Using multiple cases, this study unravels the dominant elements that influence knowledge transfer process development, governance, implications and responsibilities. The major contribution of this study is the development of a framework based on empirical evidence using three knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs) which illustrates the way in which soft factors in knowledge transfer partnership phases may have an impact on success or failure of university–industry collaborations for innovation.     

The role of transformational leadership in enhancing organizational innovation: Hypotheses and some preliminary findings

A wide range of factors has been found to affect organizational innovation. Of these, top managers' leadership style has been identified as being one of the most, if not the most, important. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the link between this factor and innovation at the organizational level. This study builds on the extant literature to propose four hypotheses about how top managers' leadership styles directly and indirectly (via empowerment and organizational climate) affect their companies' innovation. A multisource approach is used to collect survey data from 32 Taiwanese companies in the electronics/telecommunications industry. The findings support a direct and positive link between a style of leadership that has been labeled as “transformational” and organizational innovation. They also indicate that transformational leadership has significant and positive relations with both empowerment and an innovation-supporting organizational climate. The former is found to have a significant but negative relation with organizational innovation, while the latter has a significant and positive relationship. The implications of the findings and possible directions for future research are discussed.