关系资本、双元创新与高技术产业主导设计

利用2004-2012年中国车辆标准数据和442家汽车企业专利数据，采用结构方程模型，实证检验了企业双元创新如何在标准联盟组合的关系资本与高技术产业主导设计间发挥中介作用。结果表明：在标准联盟组合的商业关系与高技术产业主导设计间，企业探索式创新和利用式创新均起到部分中介作用；在标准联盟组合的政治关系与高技术产业主导设计间，企业探索式创新起到部分中介作用，而利用式创新的中介作用不显著。研究结论为主导设计与网络组织理论提供了新的经验和证据，为国家和企业推动高技术产业主导设计的确立提供了理论指导。

Relational capital,ambidextrous innovation and dominant design in high-tech industries

The dominant design is a design standard that extensively adopted, based on the competition of different technology standards during the process of industrial evolution and development. The emergence of dominant design impacts current and future product development in an industry. At present, emerging economies are still located in the edge of global industrial division and have not yet mastered the key technologies and technical standards. Although there is a gap between China and developed countries in dominant design competition of many fields, the emerging of high-tech industry is still in the incubation and hatching stage, and the dominant design has not been unified. In this period, Chinese enterprises still have opportunities to achieve independent technological leapfrogging and catching up. As highlighted by prior studies, the emergence of dominant design is determined by a number of factors, including but not limited to 1) compatibility with existing technology, 2) product-market characteristics, 3) customer expectations, and 4) network effects. However, Chinese enterprises often experience uncertain economic and market environments, and social ties act as a substitution for the traditional business practices of established institutions. Enterprises participate in standard alliances and collaborate with industry partners and governments can establish social ties, thus obtain relationship rents, and enhance the emergence of dominant design. Therefore, it is a critical issue for both governments and enterprises to understand how a focal firm′s social ties will influence the establishment of dominant design. The current study examines the role of social ties, and the link between social relationship on a firm′s influence in establishing the industry′s technology dominant design. Specifically, this study aims at examining the mediation role of the ambidextrous innovation between the relational capital in standard alliance portfolio and dominant design in high-tech industries. To test our hypotheses, we selected firms involved in the standard-setting activities of Chinese automotive de jure standards. A total of 443 firms published de jure standards in the automotive industry from 2004 to 2012. A group of firms that have drafted and submitted the standard proposal to the standardization body can be regarded as members of a standard alliance. First, we collected alliance membership data from the Chinese Standard Database, provided by the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). The automobile enterprises work together to submit a technology standard proposal to the formal standardization body and are regarded as alliance members of record. Based on our interviews with three firms that have participated in the drafting of technology standards, the relationship tenure of standard alliances normally lasts for 24 to 36 months. Consistent with previous research, we used three years as the unit of analysis. Then, we constructed adjacency matrices based on three-year windows, resulting in five periods. Second, we also collected data on firms′ patenting activities, provided by the Patent Information Service Platform for Key Industries of China. We use patent data to measure this pair of variables of ambidextrous innovation. According to patents applied by firm i in year t, former three bits of IPC number are filtrated. If a corporation did not apply for patent containing same IPC number within past 5 years, then the patent is regarded as explorative innovation; if a corporation applied for patent containing same IPC number within past 5 years, then the patent is regarded as exploitative innovation. Finally, we use two structural equation models to test the multiple mediating effects of both exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. One of structural equation models tests the mediating effects of business ties on the emergence of dominant design, and another tests the mediating effects of political ties on the emergence of dominant design. We use AMOS as a useful software to establish structural equation models, and apply Bootstrap to exam the significance of the mediating effects with 5000 samples. Besides, we use Sobel test to exam the individual effect from exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, rather than their dual mediating effect. Based on the sample from the emerging market, discusses the direct relationship between focal firms′ social ties in standard alliance and the emergence of dominant design, and the mediating effect of ambidextrous Innovation. Here, “ambidextrous Innovation” has been considered in the relationship between “social ties in standard alliance” to “the emergence of dominant design”, and the “black box” between “social ties in standard alliance” and “the emergence of dominant design” has been explained. Our empirical findings show that the ambidextrous innovation, in terms of exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, plays the partial mediation role, as a whole or respectively, between business ties in standard alliance portfolio and dominant design in high-tech industries. The results indicate that to maximum the positive influence of business ties on the emergence of dominant design, enterprises may take advantages of both exploratory innovative and exploitative innovative activities. Moreover, when enterprises lay emphasis up on exploitative innovation together with exploratory innovation, those two activities may have a dual partial mediating effect between political ties in standard alliance portfolio and dominant design in high-tech industries. But regarding the single mediating effect of each innovative activities, there is only a significantly individual mediating effect of exploratory innovation exists between political ties and the emergence of dominant design in high-tech industries. These results indicate that enterprises may rely on exploratory innovative activities to maximum the positive influence of political ties on the emergence of dominant design, or combine the exploitative innovative activities with exploratory innovative activities to achieve their purpose on the emergence of dominant design. Our findings add new insights to the research on the social capital, technology innovation and dominant design to a certain extent，by providing new empirical evidences from Chinese automobile industry, and are beneficial to governments and enterprises by providing theoretical guidance to meet their needs in promoting the emergence of dominant design in high-tech industries. The quantitative measurement about the dominant design has been realized, and business ties and political ties have been measured by objective data. We provide decision-making references for the configuration of business ties and political ties, and the allocation of organizational resources in exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation and provide policy suggestions for governments and enterprises on the emergence of dominant design.