Dual-network embeddedness, absorptive capacity, and enterprise innovation performance: evidence from the Chinese hi-tech manufacturing industry

How Do Clusters Drive Firm Performance in the Regional Innovation System? A Causal Complexity Analysis in Chinese Strategic Emerging Industries

“…In our study, to better represent these factors, six influential theoretical constructs are adopted, including resource interdependence, task interdependence, local embeddedness, non-local embeddedness, exploitative innovation, and exploratory innovation. We then propose alternative holistic archetypes from these theoretical constructs emerging from Resource Dependence Theory (e.g., [51,52]), Social Network Theory (e.g., [26,53,54]), and Ambidexterity Theory (e.g., [23,28,29,55]).…”

“…Furthermore, previous studies have shown that both ambidextrous innovation and network embeddedness have contradictory effects on firms' performance [26,68]. In this study, we pose a new perspective on these inconsistent findings by considering the cluster context and deeply exploring how different dimensions of these factors as interacting parts of the whole contribute to high performance.…”

“…In addition, these studies have explored various factors in the regional innovation system that influence the relationship between cluster and firm-level outcomes. These factors include the characteristics of an organization (e.g., organizational isomorphism, organizational proximity) [22], the knowledge creation and transfer processes in which scholars have paid specific attention to knowledge sharing, ambidextrous learning, and absorptive capability [8,23,24], and the relational and structural aspects of the collaborative networks where the firms are embedded [25,26].…”