Top-down, bottom-up or outside-in? An examination of triadic mechanisms on firm innovation in Chinese firms
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Top‑down, bottom‑up or outside‑in? An examination of triadic mechanisms on firm innovation in Chinese firms Yu Zhou1 · Guangjian Liu1 · Xiaoxi Chang2 · Ying Hong3 Received: 16 April 2019 / Revised: 19 July 2019 / Accepted: 29 August 2019 © The Author(s) 2019
Abstract This paper examines the influence of the interaction of three sources of innovation, namely, top-down (bureaucratic structure), bottom-up (high-involvement HRM) and outside-in (outreaching network), on two stages of firm innovation, i.e. invention and commercialization. Using data from 620 large Chinese companies, we found that there was a synergy between the bureaucratic structure and a high-involvement HRM system in influencing firm innovation. Social networks were most effective in promoting firm innovation in the presence of a high-involvement HRM system. The bureaucratic structure inhibited social networks in contributing to firm innovation. Ideas for future research and practical implications are discussed. Keywords Bureaucracy · High involvement · Social network · Firm innovation · China
* Yu Zhou [email protected] * Xiaoxi Chang [email protected] Guangjian Liu [email protected] Ying Hong [email protected] 1
School of Business, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100872, China
2
School of Business, China University of Political Science and Law, No. 27 Fuxue Road, Changping Dist., Beijing 102249, China
3
Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University, 140 W. 62nd Street, Room 301, New York, NY 10023, USA
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Introduction Innovation is crucial for today’s organizations to create and sustain competitive advantages (Brem et al. 2016; Herrera 2015; He et al. 2019; Huang et al. 2016; Rialp-Criado and Komochkova 2017). Micro and macro studies alike have sought to identify the determinants of firm innovation (Ahuja et al. 2008; Crossan and Apaydin 2010; Jing et al. 2017; Luong et al. 2017; Rothaermel and Hess 2007; Zhou et al. 2019), which range from structural characteristics (Damanpour 1991; Damanpour and Aravind 2011; Jia et al. 2019) to human capital and social networks (Ahuja 2000; Bornay-Barrachina et al. 2016; Yang and Shafi 2019; Subramaniam and Youndt 2005; Zhang et al. 2017). A recent constructive review of the cumulated literature on innovation, however, suggests that despite the multi-level, multi-facet, and complex nature of innovation, each study has tended to adopt a one-dimensional definition of innovation, tackle innovation from a single level of conceptualization and use variables from one sub-field of research, which present a vastly heterogeneous and fragmented picture of innovation (Anderson et al. 2014). Hence, many precious opportunities for future innovation research exist, which we will delineate below. First, in a review of extant conceptualizations of innovation, Anderson et al. (2014) called for “more radical conceptualizations of creativity and innovation processes and outcomes” (p. 1318). The prior research has sug
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