Influence of Firms’ Network Position on their Innovation Outcome in a Mature Industrial Cluster

Abstract

Our study employs a social network perspective to investigate the influence of firms' structural and relational embeddedness on their innovation outcome in a directed network in a mature industrial cluster. From the structural embeddedness perspective, we argue that a central position in an informal advice network does not bring equal innovation benefits to advice-seekers and advice-givers. Notably, in a mature cluster, we expect that the number of advice giving ties (popularity) positively influences the innovation outcome of firms, whereas the number of advice-seeking ties {activity) negatively affects the firms' innovation. We also expect that access to structural holes has a negative and significant impact on innovation outcome in a mature industrial cluster. From the relational embeddedness perspective, we investigate the effect of strong and weak ties on the innovation outcome of firms in a mature industrial cluster. We expect a positive relationship between firms' innovation output and strong ties, and a negative relationship between weak ties and the innovation output of firms. Our findings suggest that activity has a significant negative impact on the innovation outcome of firms, while popularity shows a significant positive impact on the innovative outcome of firms. Strong ties show a positive and significant impact on innovation, while weak ties demonstrate a significant negative effect on innovation. We also test the mediating effect of absorptive capacity on the relationship between advice ties and innovation. We find that absorptive capacity fully mediates the relationship between advice-giving and advice-seeking ties, and innovation.

Impacts of cognitive and social distances on supply chain capability: the moderating effect of information technology utilization

“…, 2014; Davids and Frenken, 2018). However, regarding the key factors affecting coordination and information and knowledge transfer in the process of cooperation, the existing research on cognitive and social distances has primarily focused on cooperative innovation between enterprises in the supply chain (Golra et al. , 2018; Nguyen et al.…”

“…, 2016). Although the existing research on cognitive and social distances has primarily focused on cooperative innovation between enterprises in supply chains (Golra et al. , 2018; Nguyen et al.…”

“…technology and business networks) in different ways. Golra et al. (2018) also pointed out that social and cognitive distances between enterprises have different influences on product innovation network, respectively.…”

“…According to Boschma (2005), cognitive distance refers to the differences in knowledge accumulation and professional skills among enterprises, which are regarded as an essential prerequisite for cooperation between upstream and downstream actors in a supply chain. At the same time, as an index, reflecting embedded relationships between boundary personnel, social distance has an important effect on enterprises' resources and status in the supply chain network and is particularly important to knowledge transfer and information exchange between supply chain partners (Golra et al. , 2018).…”

“…According to Boschma (2005), cognitive distance refers to the differences in knowledge accumulation and professional skills among enterprises, which are regarded as an essential prerequisite for cooperation between upstream and downstream actors in a supply chain. At the same time, as an index, reflecting embedded relationships between boundary personnel, social distance has an important effect on enterprises' resources and status in the supply chain network and is particularly important to knowledge transfer and information exchange between supply chain partners (Golra et al, 2018). Although previous research on cognitive and social distances has primarily focused on cooperative innovation between enterprises in a supply chain (Golra et al, 2018;Nguyen et al, 2019;Hu et al, 2019), the process of cooperative innovation in supply chains that these researchers have focused on is essentially one that promotes the formation and co-evolution of knowledge networks (Huang et al, 2016).…”