This paper empirically examines the impact of ESG ratings on the innovation performance of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2022. The results show that improvements in the ESG ratings are significantly beneficial to the innovation performance of enterprises in the next year. Moreover, corporation age, power concentration, liquidity, the proportion of independent directors, the leverage ratio and the book-to-market value are conducive to the adjustment effect of ESG ratings. Especially, corporate profitability can play a positive mediating role, but corporate growth plays a negative role. Furthermore, competitive level actively enhances the innovation performance and profitability of enterprises. However, the pursuit of high ESG scores can incentivise monopolistic enterprises to innovate. In addition, the marginal effect of ESG investment on polluting enterprises is stronger than that on clean enterprises and that the effect on private enterprises is stronger than that on government-owned enterprises.
This study investigated the correlation between new scientific knowledge and science-based firm innovation, and the mediating role of bridging scientists, in emerging markets. The study presents new insights into how new scientific knowledge exhibits a unique benefit in establishing sustainable competitive advantage for firms. It contends that bridging scientists, an emerging class of scientific human intellectual capital in firms, can improve science-based firm innovation owing to their dual role in patenting and publishing, enabling firms to deal with different and divergent logics of new science and innovation development and spanning the 'valley of death' between science and innovation. Our hypotheses are supported by a robust empirical analysis of 146 publicly listed Chinese biopharmaceutical companies. This study offers valuable evidence for emerging markets and proposing an expanded classification of bridging scientists to provide valuable supplementary evidence in response to the call for the heterogeneity of scientific human capital.
Adopting a platform-economy perspective, this study investigates the iterative evolution of business models in China's B2B sector, framing firms as multi-sided intermediaries that orchestrate ecosystem interactions. Through a longitudinal multi-case analysis, the research identifies distinct developmental pathways shaped by initial resource configurations, revealing how companies transform from transaction facilitators to ecosystem designers. The findings demonstrate that value is created through three synergistic mechanisms: improving operational efficiency, optimising activity systems, and reconfiguring the division of labour across upstream and downstream participants. Crucially, these business model innovations enable platforms to leverage bilateral network effects and collaborative resource utilisation, embodying key sharing economy characteristics such as shared infrastructure and the pooling of idle capacities. By explaining how platforms align their activity systems with resource-sharing logic, this paper contributes a comprehensive framework to platform economy theory and the broader literature on B2B digital transformation.
This study investigates international knowledge spillovers arising from government-funded R&D projects (GFPs). While GFPs are often justified by their domestic benefits, their international effects remain less clear. We posit that GFPs amplify international spillovers by signalling technological promise: government selection legitimises priority fields and attracts foreign attention. Using patent data from Japanese GFPs and a matched sample of private R&D, we find that GFPs' patents receive significantly more international forward citations, especially when projects are highlighted in national budget plans. These results suggest that GFPs, though designed to enhance national competitiveness, simultaneously strengthen the global circulation of knowledge. The findings highlight the need for policy designs that balance openness with appropriation by enhancing absorptive capacity and incentivising follow-up innovation.
In an era of intensifying geopolitical tensions, international sanctions on high-tech firms have emerged as a critical factor reshaping the global innovation landscape. This study investigates how international sanctions against high-tech firms affect peer firms' innovation through contagion effects. Based on a sample of 3,590 Chinese high-tech firms listed on the A-share market from 2015 to 2021, we examine the effects of sanctions on peer firms' innovation inputs and outputs. Drawing on the contagion effect theory, the results show that sanctions increase peer firms' innovation inputs due to profit-seeking and risk-avoidance motives and decrease innovation outputs due to resource constraints and lagged innovation cycles. Further exploration of boundary conditions demonstrates that government subsidies and industry competitiveness enhance the positive effect on innovation inputs, whereas supplier concentration weakens both the positive effect on inputs and the negative effect on outputs. This study contributes to the literature on contagion effects by revealing the complex interplay among geopolitical events, international sanctions, and firm innovation.
Innovation ecosystem embeddedness is a crucial strategy for non-core firms to address resource deficiencies, achieve innovative development, and rebuild competitive advantages. This study collected sample data from 505 enterprises to empirically examine the relationship between innovation ecosystem embeddedness and the innovation performance of non-core firms, including the mediating role of organisational resilience and the moderating role of ecological maturity. The research revealed that both technological innovation embedding and business value-based embedding significantly positively impact the innovation performance of non-core firms. Organisational resilience partially mediates the influence of both technological innovation embedding and business value-based embedding on the innovation performance of non-core firms. Ecological maturity positively moderates the effects of both technological innovation embedding and business value-based embedding on the innovation performance of non-core firms. This study elucidates the mechanisms through which non-core firms achieve innovative development by embedding themselves in the innovation ecosystem. It provides both a theoretical foundation and practical guidance for non-core firms to leverage the innovation ecosystems to mitigate their disadvantages and achieve growth through innovation.
In an increasingly bifurcated world, multinational construction megaprojects are vulnerable to the deleterious impact of knowledge hiding. This study investigated the dual role of psychological ownership in such settings and highlights how employees' perception of organisational politics moderates its effects. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and a multidimensional conception of territoriality, this study argues that psychological ownership simultaneously cultivates territorial defending - thereby intensifying knowledge hiding - and territorial expanding, which diminishes knowledge hiding. A survey of employees from diverse Chinese industries revealed that heightened perceptions of organisational politics strengthened the positive association between psychological ownership and territorial defending but attenuated its positive association with territorial expanding. The findings clarify how feelings of ownership can yield both adverse and beneficial knowledge-related behaviours, which underscores the need to mitigate politicised environments. The findings also highlight the need for managerial interventions to reduce political interference and encourage a supportive environment.
In the current digital economy, digital transformation has brought about extensive and profound impacts on enterprise innovation performance. This study focuses on inter-organisational knowledge sharing and intra-organisational knowledge creation based on the knowledge-based view, and investigates their influence on the relationship between digital transformation and innovation. We employed the PLS-SEM method to analyse the questionnaire data of 219 enterprises in China. The empirical results illustrate that enterprises implementing digital transformation significantly enhance innovation speed and quality, among which knowledge creation mediates the relationship between digital transformation and innovation speed, whereas knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between digital transformation and innovation quality. By enriching the debates between digital transformation and innovation from the perspective of the knowledge-based view, this research provides a theoretical basis for enterprises to implement digital transformation and choose knowledge management strategies.
This research explores the behavioural mechanism of firm innovation in the context of the US-China decoupling since 2018. Under suddenly increasing environmental uncertainty, while most firms are risk-aversion, firms with a social performance feedback leap (i.e., pre-shock underperforming firms outperforming others after the shock) get promising information from the leap and thus are more likely to take risks and launch innovation. The effect is stronger for firms with a promotion focus, which are more likely to identify and positively interpret the leap and take actions to sustain the advantage. We find support for the arguments using data from 330 Chinese listed firms engaged in trade with the US. Our study introduces a behavioural mechanism to understand the impact of decoupling on innovation and contributes to the behavioural theory of the firm (BTOF) with a novel concept.
The escalating Sino-US trade tensions have increased the degree of environmental uncertainty faced by firms; however, the impact of such uncertainty on exploratory innovation remains understudied. Drawing on real options theory, we investigate how firms' perceptions of Sino-US trade uncertainty influence their exploratory innovation and how this relationship is moderated by individual-, firm-, and industry-level contingencies (i.e., top management teams with R&D backgrounds, financial slack, and industrial competition). Analysing a panel dataset of 1,119 Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2014 to 2020, we observe a negative association between firms' perceptions of Sino-US trade uncertainty and their exploratory innovation. This negative effect is mitigated if firms possess a higher proportion of top management team members with R&D backgrounds or ample financial slack, or if industrial competition is intense. These findings deepen our understanding of firms' innovative activities in uncertain environments.
The effect of upstream and downstream trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on firms' innovation output has attracted growing academic attention in recent years; however, a consistent conclusion has not yet been reached. By leveraging real options theory, our study attempts to reconcile the difference in previous studies and reveals that vertical TPU has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the focal firm's innovation output. We present two opposing effects: the innovation opportunity and innovation risk mechanisms. Combining the static and dynamic perspectives of the supply chain, we suggest that supply chain concentration weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship, while supply chain stability strengthens it. The empirical results for the Chinese-listed firms support our predictions. Our study contributes to the literature on TPU and supply chain management and echoes the call for the real options theory to strike a balance between flexibility and commitment. We suggest that firms assess their degree of vertical TPU and strategically choose the best combination of supply chain concentration and stability to facilitate innovation.
While the China-US trade war continues to escalate, the entity list sanctions, as an important part of the trade war, could have a significant impact on Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs). This study examines the impact of cooperators being listed on the entity list on the global positioning of CMNEs. Using micro firm-level data, this research encompasses 6,116 firm-year observations, representing 1,869 listed CMNEs. Building on the resource-based view and risk spillover theory, we hypothesise that, as risks emanate through collaborative relationships from sanctioned entities, CMNEs' outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) exhibits greater international location dispersion and increased average geographic distance. Furthermore, we discovered that overseas executive background and resource endowment significantly moderate these effects. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the strategic adjustments CMNEs make in response to the entity list and concludes with practical recommendations for enterprises to mitigate the risks of technological decoupling and deglobalisation trends.
Innovation serves as the primary driving force for scientific and technological advancement. Knowledge has increasingly become a critical resource that shapes the landscape of technological innovation and economic development, particularly in this bifurcated world. Knowledge spillover in supply networks has become a key channel for firms to acquire external knowledge, integrate internal resources, and enhance innovation. Using a sample of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China from 2012 to 2021, this study indicates the impact of inter-organisational dependence structures on the innovation spillover effects between MNEs and local firms based on a negative binomial regression model. The findings indicate that inter-organisational dependence structure inhibits the innovation spillover effects between MNEs and firms in emerging economies. Heterogeneity analysis shows that with longer relationship duration and higher transaction relationship value, buyers of MNEs can secure more knowledge spillover based on technological capabilities and follow-on innovation based on innovative capabilities.
How does exporting drive innovation? Existing studies provide limited insights into this question, particularly from the perspective of managerial cognition within firms. This paper revisits the three core premises of the attention-based view proposed by Ocasio (1997) to explore the mechanisms by which export activities influence innovation. Drawing on an attention-allocation perspective, we reveal that export intensity exhibits an inverted U-shaped effect on innovation performance. High product concentration amplifies this curvilinear relationship by focusing managerial attention on the main product. Conversely, a decentralised organisational structure, characterised by multiple operating units, mitigates or reverses the inverted U-shaped effect. In the context of digital transformation, the relationship between export intensity and innovation performance becomes more pronounced.
The catch-up oriented innovation policy (CuOIP) represents a tailored application of mission-oriented innovation policies in latecomer countries. This study explores the structural dimensions of CuOIP and empirically examines its impact on enterprises' technological capabilities. Our findings reveal that CuOIP is a systematic policy encompassing five key types of policy instruments: entity cultivation, capacity building, market creation, platform construction, and institutional strategy. Moreover, the empirical results demonstrate that CuOIP positively influences enterprises' technological capabilities. Industrial competition pressure and enterprises' resource application capability positively moderate the relationship between the CuOIP and enterprises' technological capabilities. By delving into the theoretical underpinnings of mission-oriented innovation policies, this study contributes valuable practical insights for emerging countries aiming to achieve technological capability catch-up.
Technology intelligence as an information practice for decision support in innovation is attracting increasing interest from companies. This exploratory article discusses an underestimated way to improve technology intelligence practices: the use of structured analysis frameworks. We present an opportunity for technology intelligence experts to incorporate the lessons of innovation studies into the way they study the dynamics of innovation, thereby consolidating and diversifying the insights they are likely to provide to decision makers. More specifically, we show how the technological innovation systems approach can contribute to technology intelligence analysis. We argue that this approach can provide a relevant analytical tool for analysing and evaluating the development of a particular technological field. As a result, the analyses produced will be richer and the professionalisation of the technology intelligence experts can be expected to improve.
Research and development (R&D) has been associated with the accomplishment of business results through capital investment. In recent years, the efficiency of R&D investment by US firms has declined; however, there is a lack of empirical evidence. Therefore, this study empirically analyses the relationship between R&D, capital investments, and the US firms' profitability. A regression analysis was conducted using data from US stock market-listed firms between fiscal years (FY) 2010 to 2021. The results indicate a significantly negative R&D ratio coefficient for all years. Additionally, the capital investment ratio coefficient was significantly positive in FY2019 and FY2021. However, for FY2011 it was positive but insignificant. The coefficients were significantly negative for all other years. The results indicate decreased efficiency of R&D investments by US firms, indicating opportunities to enhance their profitability. Moreover, the findings contribute to the existing literature and will assist practitioners make more informed management-related decisions.
Under the uncertain environment featured with geopolitical bifurcation and climate change, manufacturing companies are urged to enhance green innovation process performance towards sustainable growth. As a disruptive technology, artificial intelligence (AI) is introducing great potential in empowering manufacturing companies to conduct green innovation. However, the mechanisms and features of this process are still a subject of debate and warrant deeper exploration. Therefore, this study draws from the knowledge-based view and dynamic capability theory to investigate the effects of AI adoption on the efficiency and persistence of green innovation by employing a dataset consisting of 3,047 listed Chinese manufacturing companies from 2017 to 2021. Empirical findings indicate that corporate strategies comprising AI adoption can significantly enhance the efficiency and persistence of green innovation. Moreover, the effect on green innovation efficiency is more pronounced in industries with higher levels of dynamism. Furthermore, we discovered green innovation efficiency of high-tech manufacturing companies and green innovation persistence of low-tech manufacturing companies are benefited more from AI adoption. The results emphasise the importance for manufacturing companies, for both in high-tech and low-tech industries with significant environmental dynamism, to actively employ AI technologies to develop dynamic capabilities essential for achieving sustainable development.
The selection of an appropriate partner plays a crucial role in overcoming technological barriers via technological innovation. This study aims to propose a methodology for the selection of technological innovation partners, focusing on recommending different potential partners based on ambidextrous technological innovation. This article presents a comprehensive framework for partner selection in collaborative innovation. The construction of collaboration networks relies on the existing collaborative relationships. The Louvain algorithm is employed to partition networks into distinct communities, while the number of times of co-citation is utilised for selecting the appropriate community. The community members are divided into two parts of partners for radical innovation and partners for incremental innovation based on their technical distance from the enterprise requiring partners. The partner selection methods proposed in this study demonstrate remarkable efficacy in expanding the range of partner selection options, improving selection efficiency and enhancing pertinence.
