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The environment in high-tech industries is highly dynamic, and after COVID-19, it has become even more unpredictable. Hence, it has become critical for firms to develop strategies to cope with a highly dynamic environment. This paper aims to analyze how the impact of the scientific collaboration networks with URIs (universities and research institutes) on firm innovation performance is contingent on technological and market dynamics.

Using a sample of 174 Chinese firms in the new-energy vehicle industry during 2004–2015, the authors applied a random-effects negative binomial modeling approach to model these relationships.

A broad and strong scientific collaboration network promotes firm innovation network effects are contingent on technological and market dynamics. While technological dynamics strengthen the effect market dynamics weaken it due to the different purposes of collaboration for firms and URIs.

Firms should adjust the structure of scientific collaboration networks with URIs when facing different environments. The government should encourage firms to jointly research with diverse URIs and play an active role in stabilizing market environments.

This study contributes to the academic debate on university-industry scientific collaborations. Applying the temporary competitive advantage (TCA) framework, we provide nuances to the literature that studies the factors that condition the effects of networks. This study also adds to the research on firm scientific collaboration networks by measuring networks based on the coauthorship between firms and URIs.

Shifting focus from innovation quantity to innovation quality becomes a priority in innovation study, business and policy. This paper aims to figure out whether and how knowledge recombination (recombinant exploration/recombinant exploitation) affects firms' innovation quality (technological value/economic value) and how these relationships are moderated by environmental turbulence (technological turbulence/market turbulence) in the context of open innovation.

A panel data set is built on 373 Chinese pharmaceutical firms' patents and new product data from 1997 to 2020. And a negative binomial regression model is applied to test the hypotheses.

The analyses indicate that (1) recombinant exploration favors technological value but hinders economic value, while (2) recombinant exploitation benefits both. Regarding environmental turbulence's moderating effects, (3) technological turbulence has opposite moderating effects on the impacts of recombinant exploration versus exploitation on technological value, whereas (4) market turbulence benefits the impacts of both on economic value.

This research provides the answer to practitioners' question that “How to improve innovation quality?” That is “Think from a recombination logic, clarify your internal value preference and the external turbulence.”

From an emerging perspective of innovation, this research expands the innovation quality research to a recombination logic. A multi-dimensional research framework is developed to clarify the complex relationships between knowledge recombination and innovation quality. Finally, two moderators, technological versus market turbulence, formulate more targeted implications for firms' innovation management in open innovation.

A firm's inventions provide technical information for product planning and technical support for new product development (NPD). In the knowledge-based theory, inventing is regarded as a process of knowledge combination. This paper aims to classify the firm's inventive capabilities based on the combinatorial view and investigate the effects of inventive capabilities on NPD performance.

Four types of inventive capabilities are identified concerned with the knowledge used to combine in the inventive activities. By utilizing a dataset of 572 firms from China's automotive manufacturing industry, the roles of different inventive activities in the generation of new inventions are compared. Then the effects of different inventive capabilities on NPD performance are empirically examined by using negative binomial regression analysis.

The time series for the number of patented inventions derived from different types of combinations generally exhibits a steady upward trend, and the number of patents derived from recombination is much higher. The empirical results demonstrate that the inventive capabilities associated with reused recombination and creative recombination exhibit positive effects on NPD performance, and the inventive capabilities associated with novel combination and original combination exhibit non-linear effects on NPD performance.

The findings contribute to NPD literature by investigating the effects of different inventive capabilities on NPD performance. This study also provides guidelines for manufacturing managers to improve NPD performance by building appropriate inventive capabilities.

With the clarification of three effective methods (share holding, decision participation and promotion of technical grade) to govern R&D teams in software enterprises, the purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical investigation of the application of these methods in Chinese software enterprises.

The research is based on a quantitative approach with 34 items designed in the questionnaire to measure the indicators. All items were rated by respondents on a five‐point Likert‐type scale. In order to testify the validity of the three methods of R&D team governance, a correlation analysis and a linear regression were made to examine the relationship between these methods of R&D team governance and R&D performance.

The evidence shows that decision participation and promotion of technical grades are the two most effective methods to govern R&D teams in Chinese software enterprises, while share holding is not conducive to R&D performance. The share holding level of R&D staffs is fairly low; even “no share.” What is more important is that many software enterprises regard it as a welfare institution but not an incentive method. Therefore, the shareholding mechanism cannot enhance R&D performance. In addition, relevant regulations have not been established completely. There are many deficiencies in the process of intellectual property management of Chinese enterprises. These factors have hindered the effective performance of R&D staff.

The research findings emphasize the importance of governance of R&D teams in the Chinese software industry and highlight the critical issues that need to be addressed in order to enhance the performance of R&D staff.

The concept of R&D team governance is examined and elaborated within the context of China, which points to the need of developing new direction of R&D team management.

The purpose of this paper is to report a recent technological innovation investigation to the Chinese enterprises with different ownerships. The goal of this research is to discuss whether there are innovation mechanisms in place, and to test the influence of the innovation mechanisms and the government policies to the Chinese enterprises' innovation performance.

The investigation and analyses are based on a survey to the firms (n=42) from different sectors in central China, for which a research framework and analytical model of firm‐level innovation in China was developed.

The paper finds that the innovation mechanisms in the Chinese firms are to a certain extent in place, and the market factor has become the driving force for the enterprises' innovation. By using the pooled‐variance t‐test for comparing means, the authors further tested that innovation mechanisms and the government innovation policies have positive influences on the innovation performance of the Chinese enterprises.

The first‐hand technological innovation situation of the Chinese firms are evaluated by the relevant firm leaders (insiders) and analyzed by a Western research team (outsiders), which is of great significance to the Western academic and practitioners.

Recent studies have conceptualized market orientation into two distinct components, responsive and proactive market orientation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the environmental antecedents that lead to the adoption of a responsive or proactive market orientation.

Drawing upon the market orientation literatures, and using theory derived from environment strategy research as a starting point, a conceptual model is developed in which environmental factors are antecedent variables influencing the responsive and proactive market orientation. To test the conceptual model, data were collected from 308 companies across a wide range of industries.

The results show that responsive market orientation is positively related to market turbulence, technological turbulence and competitive intensity. On the contrary, proactive market orientation is negatively related to market turbulence, technological turbulence, and competitive intensity.

The paper makes a theoretical contribution in that it extends the market orientation literature and examines what environmental antecedents affect responsive and proactive market orientation. The paper also makes some managerial recommendations.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Collaborations between companies and universities and research institutions can be a powerful tool in dealing with the exponential growth of technology and its development. Yet they are not always a positive benefit for a desired outcome, and must be adjusted where necessary based on the dynamics of either the technology or the market.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Quality management practices (QMP) have stood as one of the critical strategic differentiators for enhancing firm performance. The production and manufacturing industry is the main driving force of economic growth and social development for any developed or developing country. This study aims to focus on two primary dimensions of QMP: soft quality management practices (SQMP) and hard quality management practices (HQMP) from the socio-technical system perspectives. Based on institutional theory perspectives, the study explores the impact of SQMP and HQMP on quality performance (QP), innovation performance (IVP) and financial performance (FP) in Indian oil processing organizations.

A proposed research model is validated using 289 cross-sectional survey data collected from the senior officials of oil processing firms in India. Covariance-based structural equation modeling is used to verify the proposed theoretical model.

SQMP, directly and indirectly, influenced QP and IVP while only indirectly to FP mediated through QP. HQMP directly impacted only QP while indirectly to IVP and FP mediated through QP.

Impact of organizational legitimacy in proper utilization or application of QMP in achieving the firm sustainable growth. The future study may address the following Research Question (RQ) also: How do QMP enhance the legitimacy of organizations operating in the oil processing industries? Are there specific mechanisms or pathways through which improved performance contributes to enhanced organizational legitimacy? How does legitimacy impact the success and sustainability of organizations, particularly, within the context of the oil processing industries? Are there regulatory requirements or industry certifications that organizations must adhere to in order to maintain legitimacy?

Similarly, manufacturing firms establish QMP of interaction and maintaining relationships with all the stakeholders, total employee empowerment and involvement, workforce commitment and workforce management, helping to control their reputations and maintain legitimacy (Li et al., 2023). Similarly, in the health industry, the health management information system (HMIS), which uses the DHIS2 platform, establishes that isomorphism legitimizes data QMP among health practitioners and, subsequently, data quality. Further, it was concluded that mimetic isomorphism led to moral and pragmatic legitimacy. In contrast, normative isomorphism led to cognitive legitimacy within the HMIS structure and helped to attain the correctness and timeliness of the data and reports, respectively (Msendema et al., 2023). Quality, flexibility and efficiency of Big Data Analytics through better storage, speed and significance can optimize the operational performance of a manufacturing firm (Verma et al., 2023).

The study provides the academician with the different dimensions of QMP. The study demonstrates how a firm develops multiple performance capabilities through proper QMP. Also, it shows how vital behavioral and managerial perspectives are to QMP and statistically solid tools and techniques. The study draws their importance to risk factors involved in the firms. Since the SQMP play a vital role, thus, emphasis on the behavioral dimension of quality requires more investigation and is in line with hard technological advancements in the quality field.

The study of the impact of HQMP and SQMP on performance is still not established. There are inconsistencies in the findings. The study of the impact of HQMP and SQMP in oil processing industries has not dealt with before. The effects of HQMP and SQMP on the firm’s FP have least been dealt. In context to the intended influence of QM implementation, QP has not been examined as a potential mediator between FP. Research carried out in the past is limited to American and European countries. However, a limited study was done in Asia, and no study has been conducted in the Indian context.

To achieve higher customer satisfaction (CS), companies implement continuous improvement (CI) programs, regardless of the growing evidence of their failure to achieve declared goals. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify whether companies are able to improve CS through the application of CI; and, second, to identify what organizational practices are able to facilitate the impact of CI on CS.

To test the developed assumptions, the study uses the structural equation modeling technique. The data for analysis were collected from 304 service companies via a custom web-survey.

The research confirms the direct positive impact of CI on CS. Further, the study demonstrates that management commitment and rewards system that encourages employees to participate in CI play the major facilitating role in improving CS through CI. These practices accompanied by quality-oriented culture and employee training in the improvement tools provide necessary infrastructure to sustain CI in the companies over time. Additionally, regardless of the vital role of goal setting for CI established in previous research, the proposed study finds a limited ability of goal setting, as compared to other organizational practices, to facilitate CI–CS relationship.

The study contributes to the scarce field of research on CI implementation in the services environment. Further, the research assesses CS as a variable of interest, as opposite to the previous studies, considering CS as a part of the composite variable. The research assesses the impact of the training in CI methodology on the CI–CS relationship, while previous research focuses on the general, work-related training. The findings provide an important basis for further academic work in the area of quality management. The identified practices can serve as guidance for managers, implementing CI in their companies due to the high fit of the proposed model.