Search results

This study empirically investigates the impacts of technological innovation and operational efficiency on environmental performance and the moderating effects of environmental orientation.

We develop a conceptual framework based on the Porter Hypothesis. We collect a sample of 850 listed firms in China between 2010 and 2019. The fixed effect model was used to analyse the data.

The empirical findings reveal that technological innovation indirectly enhances environmental performance through operational efficiency and partially mediates this impact. We also find that environmental orientation strengthens the positive impacts of technological innovation and operational efficiency on environmental performance.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing that technological innovation is positively associated with operational efficiency and environmental performance, which suggests that technological innovation can simultaneously enhance business and environmental performance. Hence, this study provides empirical support for the Porter Hypothesis. The results also extend the Porter Hypothesis by revealing how technological innovation affects environmental performance and under what conditions technological innovation has a greater impact on environmental performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technological diversification (TD) on enterprise innovation performance, meanwhile focusing on the moderating effects of various organizational slack (i.e. absorbed and unabsorbed slack) and ownership types (i.e. state-owned or privately-owned) in the context of Chinese listed firms.

This study formulates five hypotheses based on organization and agency theories. Our empirical analysis employs a fixed-effect regression estimator with a unique panel dataset of Chinese-listed manufacturing firms and 13,566 firm-year observations over 9 years from 2012 to 2020.

Our findings show that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between TD and innovation performance, varying with different types of organizational slack and ownership. In state-owned enterprises (SOEs), unabsorbed slack negatively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship; however, in privately-owned enterprises (POEs), this relationship is positively moderated. Although absorbed slack has negative moderating effects in both SOEs and POEs, its impact is only significant for POEs.

Our results imply that organizational slack has a contrasting impact on the relationship between TD and innovation performance when the type of ownership varies. Therefore, the managers that intend to achieve optimal innovation performance through TD should understand how organizational slack can be leveraged.

This study contributes to the existing literature by applying the relationship between TD and innovative performance to the transition economy, as well as examining the double-edged sword impact of state ownership on firm innovation performance.

This study investigates the relationships among digital transformation, technological innovation, industry–university–research collaborations and labor income share in manufacturing firms.

The relationships are tested using an empirical method, constructing regression models, by collecting 1,240 manufacturing firms and 9,029 items listed on the A-share market in China from 2013 to 2020.

The results indicate that digital transformation has a positive effect on manufacturing companies’ labor income share. Technological innovation can mediate the effect of digital transformation on labor income share. Industry–university–research cooperation can positively moderate the promotion effect of digital transformation on labor income share but cannot moderate the mediating effect of technological innovation. Heterogeneity analysis also found that firms without service-based transformation and nonstate-owned firms are better able to increase their labor income share through digital transformation.

This study provides a new path to increase the labor income share of enterprises to achieve common prosperity, which is important for manufacturing enterprises to better transform and upgrade to achieve high-quality development.

This paper conceptually aims to discuss the dual role of knowledge management (KM) and technological innovation, which brings about innovations, although it can be limited by psychological and emotional ownership.

This study examines the real impact of the paper on KM and technological innovation in family small to medium enterprises (FSMEs). This is a unique context affected by psychological and emotional ownership. However, COVID-19 has forced FSMEs to consider new strategies and practices to preserve their competitive advantage.

In this scenario, knowledge exchange, knowledge absorption and technology adoption appear relevant to the innovation process. This study offers a framework for how the duality of KM and technological innovation affects innovation.

Although extant research has explored technological innovation outcomes, a literature review reveals that accumulated studies on the drivers of technological innovation and KM in the context of FSMEs require further inquiry. Family members’ emotional ownership may foster KM because identification with organizational goals enhances individuals’ willingness to access and share information and stimulates new products and technological development.

Acknowledging, on the one hand, the increasing fragility of supply chains and the number of risks involved in supply chain operations and, on the other hand, the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in supply chains and the high exposure of these firms to risks of different types, this study aims to examine the relationship between supply chain risk management (SCRM) and innovation performance in SMEs. Furthermore, the impact of technological turbulence on this relationship was studied to take into account recent technological changes.

Structural equation modelling was carried out on a sample of Turkish SMEs to test the hypotheses developed.

The findings presented allow the authors to better understand the link between SCRM and innovation performance in SMEs. More precisely, empirical evidence is provided about the impact of SCRM components such as maturity and ability on innovation performance. Furthermore, the findings show the impact of technological turbulence on both SCRM and innovation performance.

By focusing on SCRM in SMEs, this paper contributes to the body of knowledge with regard to SCRM in general and with regard to SMEs in particular; research on the latter has only started recently. Moreover, by having studied SMEs from a developing country (other than China), this paper helps to develop a broader and more diverse perspective of SCRM.

Although green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO) has received much attention, it is unclear whether it affects technological green innovation (GI). Therefore, this study aims to understand how GEO affects technological GI, with its dimensions green product innovation (GPRODI) and green process innovation (GPROCI), as well as to explore whether resource orchestration capability (ROC) moderates the relationships between them.

Based on a cross-sectional survey design, data were gathered from 177 managers of large manufacturing firms in Yemen and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling via SmartPLS software.

The results revealed that GEO positively affects both GPRODI and GPROCI, with a higher effect on GPROCI. Importantly, ROC does, in fact, positively moderate the link between GEO and GPRODI.

This research adds to knowledge by combining GEO, ROC and technological GI into a unified framework, considering the perspectives of the resource-based view and the resource orchestration theory. However, the study’s use of cross-sectional survey data makes it impossible to infer causes. This is because GEO, ROC and technological GI all have effects on time that this empirical framework cannot account for.

The findings from this research provide valuable insights for executives and decision makers of large manufacturing companies, who are expected to show increasing interest in adopting ROC into their organisations. This suggests that environmentally-conscious entrepreneurial firms can enhance their GI efforts by embracing ROC.

By adopting the proposed framework, firms can carry out their activities in ways that do not harm environmental and societal well-being, as simply achieving high economic performance is no longer sufficient.

Theoretically, the results offer an in-depth understanding of the role of GEO in the technological GI domain by indicating that GEO can promote GPRODI and GPROCI. In addition, the results shed new light on the boundaries of GEO from the perspective of resource orchestration theory. Furthermore, the findings present important insights for managers aiming to enhance their comprehension of leveraging GEO and ROC to foster technological GI.

To adapt to the rapidly changing market environment, firms must constantly adjust and change their knowledge base to develop new technologies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the improvement path of firms’ breakthrough innovation from the perspective of knowledge recombination in the context of dynamic change in the knowledge base. By analyzing the influencing mechanism of environmental dynamism on the relationship between the two, this paper provides a theoretical foundation for managers to make knowledge recombination decisions under a dynamic external environment while further enriching the firm’s innovation achievements.

Using data from 220 manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock from 2010 to 2018, an extensive panel data set was constructed to investigate the effect of knowledge recombination, which was divided into recombination creation and recombination reuse, on firms’ breakthrough innovation. In addition, the authors differentiated environmental dynamism as market dynamism and technological dynamism and then examined its moderating role in the above relationships.

The research results show that various recombination behaviors of knowledge elements have a differentiated effect on firms’ breakthrough innovation presented as follows: Knowledge recombination creation is significantly positively correlated with firms’ breakthrough innovation, while knowledge recombination reuse is significantly negatively correlated with firms’ breakthrough innovation. In addition, environmental dynamism has a considerable moderating effect between knowledge recombination and firms’ breakthrough innovation further, emphasizing that the moderating effect on different types of knowledge recombination behaviors is significantly distinct.

First, given that this study refers to several Chinese noted databases to collect second-hand data for empirical analysis, future research could use first-hand data by collecting questionnaire survey and interview to provide a more practical and detailed research conclusion. Second, the authors focused on the contextual variable to explore the moderating role of environmental dynamism on the relationship between knowledge recombination and breakthrough innovation. Nevertheless, the indirect effects of other internal factors were not discussed. The authors advocate future studies to involve other moderators from employee social and phycological perspectives, such as trust in colleagues in the proposed theoretical models in this study.

This study is conducive for managers to attach great attention to knowledge management practices in the firm and to understand the critical role of knowledge recombination in affecting innovation performance under dynamic environmental changes. Moreover, this study provides practical guidance and serves as a reference for firms to strengthen their knowledge recombination ability as full utilization of existing knowledge elements and exploration of new knowledge values.

Primarily, from the perspective of dynamic changes in the knowledge base, this paper explores how the knowledge recombination behaviors affect firms’ breakthrough innovation, thereby enriching and extending the relationship theory between knowledge recombination capabilities and breakthrough innovation, while new and valuable ideas are provided in the study of issues related to the firms’ breakthrough innovation; Moreover, this study analyzes the moderating effects of diverse types of environmental dynamism on the relationship between knowledge recombination and firms’ breakthrough innovation from a multi-dimensional perspective proposing that the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on different knowledge recombination behaviors are distinct.

This study aims to examine how the knowledge breadth and depth of a patent affect its likelihood of being pledged. It also seeks to explore whether these relationships change diversely in different technological environments.

A complementary log-log model with random effects was conducted to test the hypotheses using a unique data set consisting of 348,927 invention patents granted by the China National Intellectual Property Administration from 1985 to 2015 belonging to 74,996 firms.

The findings reveal that both knowledge breadth and depth of a patent positively affect its likelihood of being pledged. Furthermore, the knowledge breadth and depth entail different degrees of superiority in different technological environments.

This study focuses on the effect of an individual patent’s knowledge base on its likelihood of being selected as collateral. It does not consider the influence of the overall knowledge characteristics of the selected patent portfolio.

Managers need to pay attention to patents’ knowledge characteristics and the changes in technological environments to select the most suitable patents as collateral and thus improve the success rate of pledge financing.

This study explores the impact of multidimensional characteristics of knowledge base on patent pledge financing within a systematic theoretical framework and incorporates technological environments into this framework.

Industry 4.0 defines the application of digital technologies on business infrastructure and processes. With the increasing need to take into account the social and environmental impact of technologies, the concept of Society 5.0 has been proposed to restore the centrality of humans in the proper utilization of technology for the exploitation of innovation opportunities. Despite the identification of humans, resilience and sustainability as the key dimensions of Society 5.0, the definition of the key factors that can enable Innovation in the light of 5.0 principles has not been yet assessed.

An SLR, followed by a content analysis of results and a clustering of the main topics, is performed to (1) identify the key domains and dimensions of the Industry 5.0 paradigm; (2) understand their impact on Innovation 5.0; (3) discuss and reflect on the resulting implications for research, managerial practices and the policy-making process.

The findings allow the elaboration of a multileveled framework to redefine Innovation through the 5.0 paradigm by advancing the need to integrate ICT and technology (Industry 5.0) with the human-centric, social and knowledge-based dimensions (Society 5.0).

The study detects guidelines for managers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers in the adoption of effective strategies to promote human resources and knowledge management for the attainment of multiple innovation outcomes (from technological to data-driven and societal innovation).

This paper aims to analyse the influence of workforce diversity on the firm’s likelihood to develop organisational innovations. Operationalising human resources diversity is not straightforward, and its effect has been rather overlooked in the context of non-technological innovations. This study analyses the impact of task-related diversity among research and development (R&D) unit workers and women R&D workers, in particular.

To estimate the impact of task-related diversity on firm propensity to undertake organisational innovation, this study uses a generalised linear model (GLM) – with a binomial family and log–log extension. GLMs are used to control problems of over-dispersion, which, in models with binary response variables, could generate inaccurate standard error estimates and provide inconsistent results.

This paper provides three important results. Firstly, employee diversity increases the firm’s propensity to engage in organisational innovations. Secondly, the influence of each facet of task-related diversity varies depending on the type of organisational innovation considered. Thirdly, gender has an effect on the innovation process; this study shows that women play a different role in the production of non-technological innovations.

This paper makes several contributions to the literature. Firstly, it makes a theoretical contribution to research on innovation management by considering the influence of human resources diversity on the development of non-technological innovations. Secondly, this study analyses the role of workforce diversity in an R&D department context to clarify the contribution made by women R&D workers.