Science and technology ethics is a value criterion and code of conduct, which must be complied in activities of scientific research and technological development. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposes to improve the system of scientific and technological innovation. Strengthening the governance of science and technology ethics is an important way to achieve this goal. It is important for sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening to strengthen the ethical governance of science and technology. The ethical governance of science and technology in China faces challenges and situations such as enhancing international competitiveness in science and technology, strengthening ethical regulation in emerging technology fields, and balancing scientific and technological innovation with ethical regulation in a reasonable manner. The paper analyzes the following issues exist in the current ethical governance of science and technology in China, that is, policies and regulatory mechanisms are incomplete, ethical review standardization and talents are lacking, scientific and research person and the public and news media are lack of guidance. Finally, the strategies and proposals to strengthen ethical governance of science and technology are advanced. The strategies and proposals can provide some references for formulation of a science-technology ethical governance system which is suitable for Chinese characteristics.
With its wide range of application scenarios, ChatGPT can effectively empower product research and development, intelligent manufacturing, education, content production, etc., which has a far-reaching impact on promotion of industrial upgrading, development of social productivity, and improvement of production tools. However, ethical risks associated with rapid development of AI in the era of digital intelligence have aroused concern from all sides. As an important guarantee to ensure sustainable and healthy development of the science and technology activities of AI enterprises, the ethical governance of government in science and technology is of key importance to promote the resolution of social risks such as algorithmic bias and discrimination, data security challenges, and misuse of computing power, as well as to promote human well-being via science and technology innovation. Based on institutional theory, the study took listed AI enterprises on the main board of A-shares in China as the research object to test the effect and mechanism of the ethical governance of government in science and technology on science and technology for social good of AI enterprises. As the results have shown, (1) The ethical governance of government in science and technology as a formal institution is positively associated with science and technology for social good of AI enterprises; (2) Social trust and political connection as informal institutions play moderating roles in the relationship between the ethical governance of government in science and technology and science and technology for social good of AI enterprises, showing the overlapping effect of informal institutions in collaboration with the ethical governance of government in science and technology on driving science and technology for social good of AI enterprises; (3) The results of heterogeneity test indicate that the ethical governance of government in science and technology has a more significant effect on improving science and technology for social good of AI enterprises in samples with high regional Confucianism, large sizes, and low executive equity incentives. Based on above, the study provides new perspectives on driving corporate science and technology for social good in the era of digital intelligence and empirical insights for the government and enterprises to address ethical risks of AI and promote human well-being, bridging the gap of prior research that ignores the critical influence of science and technology ethics policies on corporate science and technology for social good in government-dominated formal systems. Moreover, from practical perspectives, the government should accelerate the process of the ethical governance of science and technology in the field of AI, strengthen the safety bottom line, promote AI enterprises to build explainable AI, and protect user privacy and data security. Meanwhile, the government needs to strengthen the construction of agile governance capacity, led by the government to create a dynamic linkage ecosystem with the participation of enterprises, academics, news media, and other diversified subjects, to enhance the government’s forward-looking governance level of ethical risks of AI. In response to the ethical governance of government in science and technology, which includes the principles of promoting human well-being and controlling risks reasonably, AI enterprises, under the guidance of regulations and regulatory policies, take the initiative to implement self-governance and self-regulation actions such as integrating ethics into corporate culture and values, incorporating ethical values into the design of products/services, and introducing ethical risk assessment mechanisms for AI products/services, so as to realize ethical business decision-making and take into account both short-term and long-term interests, thus promoting science and technology for social good.
From the task-based Weiqi program AI-AlphaGo to the generative large language model ChatGPT, the functional outreach of AI technology is constantly evolving. Therefore, the relevant institutional supply should respond quickly and iteratively to the domain-wide changes triggered by AI. The study sorts out the current situation of institutional supply of AI technology governance in China, that a system of institutional provision with guidance and regulation complementing each other has been put in place. However, some dilemmas remain, including the overall dilemma between technology development and risk governance, the objective dilemma between diversified demand and insufficient supply, and the execution dilemma between theoretical response and practical transformation, which reveals the insufficient effectiveness of institutional supply. The study finds that there is natural internal self-compatibility between the triple institutional logic of "state, market and society" and institutional supply from the theoretical level; there is also an obvious coupling between the triple institutional logic and the demands of AI technology governance from the practical level. To improve the quality and efficiency of AI technology governance institutional supply, on the one hand, the institutional logic should be embedded in the framework of AI technology governance, in order to accurately grasp the overall demand for deterministic governance and ensure the quality of supply. Firstly, the nation logic of institutional supply proposes that AI technology should be developed on the basis of guaranteeing national scientific and technological security and social stability. It is necessary to externally enhance the awareness of scientific and technological strategic forward layouts and strengthen the ability to secure network security. Also, the existing social and ethical norms, laws and policy systems should be adjusted internally to avoid a "regulatory vacuum" and ensure the safety and controllability of AI technology development and application by clarifying the responsibilities of the main actors. Secondly, the market logic of institutional supply advocates the use of regulation to promote the healthy and orderly development of the AI industry based on respecting the law of market development. It defines safety testing and assessment standards for AI systems, products and services and forms a broad consensus of social participation. Thirdly, the society logic of institutional supply calls for strengthening the ethical governance of science and technology and enhancing the well-being of the people, which emphasizes creating more opportunities for the intelligent participation of marginalized social strata by connecting their needs through system innovation. On the other hand, on the basis of accurately grasping the new demands and clearly defining the governance goals, it is necessary to supplement the "exploratory" governance path to agilely respond to the uncertainty and complexity of the development of AI technology, and thus to enhance the efficiency of supply. Firstly, carry out dynamic practices in an iterative and gradual manner, and apply more guiding policies for dynamic management. Secondly, verify the effectiveness of governance in a small-scale pilot program, and seek only certain solutions to key issues. Finally, respond to uncertainty with informal governance, and reduce the constraints of the legitimacy process. Reflections on the path of improving the quality and efficiency of AI technology governance institutional supply under the triple logic will help to grasp the key needs and development direction of AI technology governance in China as a whole.
Abstract: The emergence of technology monopolies is incessant due to the intensifying global competition in the field of technology. Therefore, the crucial issue for China to overcome technical barriers and enhance its technological competitiveness is to assess the development potential of core technologies and the international competitive landscape. The description of the international competition situation of technology involves two steps: assessing the developmental potential of core technology and evaluating the competitiveness of each country in the technosphere with the great potential for development. The initial step involves acquiring all industry patents from the patent platform in order to select the core technology. The paper screen core patents are then evaluated based on technical and commercial criteria. Subsequently, a network-occurrence relationships of IPCs in these core patents is established, and the IPCs associated with core technologies are selected using centrality measures (degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality) and popularity. The potential of core technologies is evaluated by applying the technology life cycle to align the growth of their quantity with the theory of technological system evolution. Consequently, we select core technologies that have not yet reached saturation as those with development potential. The second step involves utilizing five indicators to evaluate the competitiveness of each country in the core technology field with development potential. These indicators include: the number of patents granted to a country, the frequency of citations received by these patents, the inclusion of IPC codes in these patents, the ranking of the country among all patent applicants, and its status within the cooperation network. The paper ultimately employs the aforementioned approach to delineate the competitive landscape of the medical equipment industry. It is found that (1) the IPCs of A61B6/00, A61B90/00, A61B17/34, A61N1/05 and A61M5/172 are recognized as the core technologies with development potential, (2) technologically advanced countries such as the United States, Japan, UK, and Germany hold a technical position with upstream advantages in the supply chain, and (3) China exhibits noticeable deficiencies in the field of potential medical equipment technology. Among them, China ranks fourth in the competitiveness evaluation of research and development of core patented technologies containing core technology IPC number A61B6/00. However, China's competitiveness evaluation is extremely low in the technology containing core technology IPC numbers A61B90/00, A61B17/34, and A61M5/172. The core technology in the technical field represented by IPC classification number A61N1/05 has not been fully mastered by China and requires focused attention. Due to the lack of upstream technology in the industrial chain, China aims to achieve significant breakthroughs within the current competitive technological landscape. To accomplish this, it is imperative for China to explore a development path that aligns with its own technological innovation and identify opportunities for advancements in technologies that have not yet reached saturation point. This will enable China to effectively bridge the technology gap either through comprehensive catch-up or partial domestic substitution. The efficient and sustainable development of China's medical equipment industry requires the integration of targeted investment resources with policy implementation to establish a comprehensive industrial support system.
R&D institutions are a powerful means to gather high-level innovation elements to achieve breakthroughs in key common technologies in China's manufacturing industry. In order to attract manufacturing R&D institutions to settle inland, we study how to attract manufacturing R&D institutions to settle inland in China based on the perspective of R&D environment satisfaction. Firstly, the inland R&D environment satisfaction measurement questionnaire is established, and six public factors are extracted by using exploratory factor analysis. Then, the importance ranking of the public factors and their measurement questions were obtained by multiple linear regression analysis. Finally, the robustness test was conducted using the sample size expansion method. The results show that: the level of R&D services and support, the effectiveness of government governance and the status of affiliated enterprises are the main influencing factors of satisfaction with R&D environment, while the promotion effects of policy support, the status of science and technology human resources and the level of digital economy development decrease in order; 10 measurement items, such as intellectual property and patent protection, the degree of socialization of science and technology service institutions, the quality of supervision, the policy of talent introduction and market competition pressure are the main influencing factors to attract manufacturing R&D institutions to settle inland.
Based on the dual perspectives of "Amount" and "Quality" of the manufacturing industry, this paper examines the impact of intelligent manufacturing on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry and its regional differences from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, and explores the mediating effect of science and technology innovation in the impact of intelligent manufacturing on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, while further exploring the regional heterogeneity of this mediating effect.The results show that: (1) Intelligent manufacturing can promotesimultaneously the "Amount and Quality" of the manufacturing industry and thus achieve high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, and the promotion effect of intelligent manufacturing on the "Amount" of the manufacturing industry is greater than the "Quality".(2) Intelligent manufacturing has contributed to the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry in the east, central and western regions, but there are regional differences in the way it works. In the eastern and western regions, the role of intelligent manufacturing in enhancing the high-quality development of manufacturing is mainly through promoting simultaneouslythe "Amount and Quality" of manufacturing, while the central region promotes the reasonable growth of manufacturing"Amount".(3) There is a partial mediating effect of Science and technology innovation in the "Amount" of smart manufacturing on manufacturing industry, and the mediating effect is not significant at the "Quality" level; from a sub-regional perspective, Science and technology innovation has a partial mediating effect at the " Amount " level in the East and Central regions, a complete mediating effect at the " Quality " level in the East region, and a non-significant mediating effect at the " Quality " level in the Central region; and there is a partial mediating effect of Science and technology innovation at the " Quality " level in the West region, and a non-significant mediating effect at the " Amount " level.The findings of this paper provide useful insights for promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing industry, and thus promoting the high-quality development of manufacturing industries.
The growth of scientific and technological talents requires a combination of external factors, and there are differences in the nature of work between basic research and technological development, which may lead to differences in the external growth situation of scientific and technological talents. Understanding these differences can help in the management and policy formulation of scientific and technological talents. The study collected data on external growth factors from 115 scientific and technological talents and 48 ordinary researchers engaged in basic research and technology development at 30 research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We adopt fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, an analysis method designed for configuration thinking, which revealed that the growth of scientific and technological talents engaged in basic research was heavily dependent on "famous mentor and excellent apprentices" and that only a small number of such talents came from non-high-level undergraduate universities become talents after studying abroad or directing research projects. Conversely, science and technology talents engaged in technology development mainly grew through research project experience and required higher levels of undergraduate education. Notably, team size did not play a significant role or had a negative effect on the growth of both types of technological talent. Finally, the relevant theoretical contributions and management suggestions are discussed.
It is vital to improve the efficiency in basic research by establishing a proper allocation mechanism of government expenditure. Existing studies mainly analyze the allocation structure of China’s science and technology expenditure based on historical evolution, the scale of expenditure and the funding sectors, which lacks attentions on the allocation structure of basic research expenditure within the government agencies. Combined with the convergence theory, it adopts two types of convergence mechanisms: σ convergence and β convergence, to explore the allocation of basic research expenditure within government agencies of China and the U.S. σ convergence mechanism, by measuring the statistical dispersion of basic research expenditure among different agencies, depicts the coordination of different agencies’ positioning and division in a country’s basic research expenditure system. Existence of σ convergence represents that there is a unified budget coordination mechanism for each agency to deploy basic research expenditure. β convergence mechanism characterizes the adjustment rate of a country's basic research expenditure allocation in various agencies by examining the impact of investment in basic research on its expenditure growth rate. Existence of β convergence indicates that more financial support has been given to agencies whose basic research expenditure are lower than average. A higher β convergence rate shows that the allocation of basic research expenditure in different agencies is more conductive to promoting a more balanced growth of basic research expenditure in different agencies.
It is found that (1) in the past 10 years, there is σ convergence in the allocation of basic research expenditure within federal government agencies, and the divergence of these agencies is reduced. In China, there is no σ convergence in the allocation of basic research expenditure within government agencies, and the divergence of these agencies has increased. (2) In terms of dynamic trends, there is absolute β convergence in the allocation of basic research expenditure within government agencies of China and the U.S., and the rate of β convergence in China is higher than that in the U.S. This indicates that the governments of China and the U.S. provide more financial support to agencies whose expenditure in basic research are lower than average. Although the allocation of basic research expenditure by the Chinese government is uneven and expanding among agencies, agencies with relatively few funding resources have a faster growth rate, which in the long run helps to achieve a balanced allocation of basic research expenditure among various agencies. Although the uneven allocation of basic research expenditure in agencies of China has increased, the convergence speed of the expenditure among agencies is faster. With the reform of the science and technology management system, as well as the foundation of central science and technology committee and the restructure of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the structure of the central government’s existing R&D expenditure will face a new round of adjustment. The findings provide insights for optimizing the allocation mechanism of basic research funding in government agencies of China and improving the efficiency of basic research expenditure. The following policy implications are obtained: Firstly, improve the balance of basic research funding allocation among agencies. Secondly, enhance the diversification level of basic research funding agencies. Thirdly, increase the proportion of non-competitive funding for basic research.
When scientific organizations provide support resources, they seldom consider the differences in the individual needs of scientists. Based on the matching hypothesis of cognitive style and environment, the study attempts to divide the cognitive style of scientists into three types: original style, efficient style and group tyle, from the perspective of scientists’ cognitive style that affects individual organizational resource preference. By exploring what kind of organizational support scientists with different cognitive styles need to match in order to produce higher scientific research output, improve the regularity of the differences in demand for organizational support resources of different scientists, and provide research support for more accurate support resources for scientific scientists with different cognitive styles. Firstly, the study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the interactive relationship between organizational support resources and researchers' cognitive style under higher scientific research output. Secondly, according to the configuration results of qualitative comparative analysis, stepwise regression is used to verify the moderating role of different styles in the influence of organizational support on scientific research output, and to verify the mechanism of the two types of elements acting on scientific research output. The study found that the three types of scientists can achieve higher scientific output, but the emphasis of organizational support required by the three styles is different: scientists with original style need to match higher salary, and scientists with efficient style need to match promotion opportunities, and group style scientific researchers need to match better emotional care and promotion opportunities.
It is a new phenomenon for start-ups to build their own ecosystems within platform ecosystems. This study attempts to put forward the concept of a symbiotic ecosystem and explores the mechanism of building such an ecosystem from the perspective of resource action of start-ups in the context of platform ecosystem enablement. Based on the case analysis of Alphesh’s establishment of its food ecosystem under the enablement of Haier ecosystem, this study reveals that start-ups can overcome their resource and legitimacy disadvantages through the enablement of platform ecosystem’s direct and intermediary resource. During the early and growth stages, start-ups integrate internal and external resources through technology-oriented and market-oriented resources orchestration aligned with their own ecosystem strategies. By enhancing the unique complementarity, ecosystemicity, and mutual symbiosis of their technological solutions, they ultimately construct a symbiotic ecosystem. This research deepens the understanding of the mechanisms of how platform ecosystem enable entrepreneurships and the construction of symbiotic ecosystems by start-ups. It provides important insights for entrepreneurial practices within the context of platform ecosystem enablement.
This paper investigates the impacts of different types of relationship quality on the quality of knowledge transfer in marketing channel, as well as the moderating effects of external environmental competitiveness and internal knowledge reconstruction capabilities. It is well-known that knowledge is a key element for enterprises to gain competitive advantages, but there is no way for an enterprise to have all the knowledge it needs for its development, so it is necessary to actively seek external knowledge transfer in order to acquire knowledge resources. In the age of information, there is a growing diversity and variability in application scenarios, the requirement for quality of knowledge has been raised to a new level, and it is no longer possible to focus only on whether the knowledge transfer behavior occurs or not to effectively respond to external market changes and subject differences in demand, so how to achieve high-quality knowledge transfer in marketing channel has become an crucial issue that enterprises must address. While inter-firm knowledge transfer has been explored in previous studies, there are still some research gaps. In the first place, in previous studies, the primary focus was on whether knowledge transfer behavior actually takes places., but the effectiveness of fulfilling knowledge needs of enterprises cannot be guaranteed by the occurrence of knowledge transfer behavior. Thus, further exploring the quality of knowledge transfer between companies within the marketing channel will have greater theoretical and practical value. In the second place, high-quality knowledge transfer does not happen on its own; it needs to be facilitated and guaranteed by a number of factors. In the context of Chinese culture, relationships play a significant role in the inter-firm transaction process, however, previous studies have mostly explored the influence of relationship quality only on a single dimension, and seldom examined its effect on the quality of knowledge transfer. At last, the quality of knowledge transfer is influenced by both internal and external environmental factors, as knowledge transfer encompasses both external and internal transportation, but existing research concentrates on the weighted impact of external environmental factors. As mentioned above, the study selected middle and senior executives from the appliance industry in China as the research objects, and used questionnaire survey method to collect data, then used multiple regression analysis to empirically analyze the collected data of 225 samples, and the results demonstrate that both economic and social relationship quality can in fact improve the quality of knowledge transfer, but the effectiveness of the roles of the two varies depending on the environmental competitive intensity, to be specific, economic relationship quality is more effective for knowledge transfer quality when environmental competitiveness is low, while conversely, social relationship quality is more beneficial when environmental competitiveness is high. Secondly, the positive impact of economic relationship quality on knowledge transfer quality is diminished by environmental competitiveness, but the positive impact of social relationship quality on knowledge transfer quality is strengthened. Finally, the quality of knowledge transfer is strengthened by the ability to reconstruct knowledge, which reinforces the positive effect of relationship quality on it. The study provides strong theoretical insights on how to effectively utilize relationship quality to improve the quality of knowledge transfer.
The core essence of open public data is to fully unleash the potential value and benefits of public data while ensuring data security. By empowering privacy computing, it enables collaborative data utilization, control over data usage and quantity, and the creation of new models for secure data circulation. This helps to eliminate the fundamental contradiction between data security and data utilization in open public data initiatives. However, enabling privacy computing for open public data involves a process that entails both value and risks, which could lead to the breakdown of trust mechanisms and give rise to new data security risks. In response, the optimal solution lies in the collaborative governance of technological measures and legal regulations, transforming privacy computing into data governance technology that adheres to both technological logic and the principles of the rule of law. This includes legal normalization of privacy computing and the organic integration of legal norms and code rules through a dual approach to open public data, achieving mutual benefits between law and technology.
The suppression of physical inventory in the United States is becoming increasingly frequent, and studying the micro impact mechanism of physical inventory on enterprise innovation has become increasingly important. This article takes 28 entities related to the physical inventory as the research object, and uses the grounded method to construct a "short-term long-term" dual feedback impact mechanism model for enterprises under the impact of the physical inventory. Research has found that: (1) the US entity list is essentially a precise "dynamic targeted" strike, consisting of three links: suppression targets, sanctions measures, and dynamic adjustments, including eight specific sanctions measures, essentially forcing Chinese enterprises to maintain a low level of competitiveness; (2) The impact process is manifested as the evolution from short-term effects to long-term effects: suppressing short-term effects mainly affects four aspects: supply chain, business chain, R&D interruption, and academic exchange. Enterprises take stressful measures to respond; The suppression of short-term effects will gradually evolve into long-term effects: increased demand, market distortion, insufficient innovation, and information scarcity, while strategic measures must be taken to address long-term effects; (3) There are two key paths for the government to respond to the suppression of the US physical inventory: emergency relief policies → short-term effects (supply chain+business chain) → early warning mechanisms, dual demand traction → long-term effects (production line collaboration+core technology research and development) → strategic breakthroughs. The key to path 1 is to help enterprises overcome the risk of capital interruption and death, while the key to path 2 is to fully utilize the favorable conditions for increased demand for domestically produced equipment. This article fills the gap in the research on the impact of physical inventory on micro enterprise processes, providing reference for the government to formulate strategies and how enterprises can respond to the impact of physical inventory.
Recently, Western countries led by the United States have continuously implemented various restrictive measures to promote the "decoupling" strategy towards China in order to maintain global hegemony, such as Sion-US trade war, technology blockade, entity list, and foreign investment screening laws, etc. Decoupling which commonly defined as the process of weakening interdependence between two nations or blocs of nations, has been found to not only posts a great threat to international trade, but also profoundly influences the innovation development of Chinese manufacturing enterprises, especially by ways of restricting the free flow of technology and skilled talents and hindering the global innovation cooperation among manufacturing firms. Extant research had mostly discussed the drivers, evidence and impacts of the “decoupling”, but how will “decoupling” affect Chinese manufacturing firms’ innovation, and how should firms cope with such a more uncertain global environment, there still needs further investigation.
This study empirically examines the impact of “decoupling” on firm’s innovation performance by using the samples of Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2021. Taking the approach of difference-in-differences (DID), this paper treats the manufacturing firms that having foreign business in the western countries as treated group; and set the year of 2018 as shock year, for the reason that as the rising of deglobalization and geopolitical conflicts, most of western countries had a significant change of their political attitude towards China since 2018, for example, launching a trade war and issuing various restrictive policies, and had made strong decoupling with China in the aspects of economy, trade and technology, etc.
Our research found that the current decoupling strategies towards China have a significant negative impact on manufacturing firms’ innovation performance, mainly by restricting the import of foreign technology and reducing the extent to which it participates in the global value chains. For one hand, decoupling enhances the threshold for foreign investment, which reduces the opportunity for firms to obtain advanced foreign technologies and take innovation cooperation; for the other hand, it intensifies the uncertainties for firms’ foreign investments, and decreases their willing and possibility of participating in global value chain. The results remain robust after various tests. The research also found that manufacturing firms can weaken the negative impact of decoupling on innovation performance through enhancing the R&D investment. Furthermore, this study takes some heterogeneity test, and the results show that the negative effect of decoupling is more significant on the samples of non-SOE enterprise, enterprises with higher financial constraints and lower international experience.
This paper responds to the current attention about the impact of decoupling on the Chinese manufacturing enterprise’ innovation development, which not only reveals the influence mechanism of decoupling restricting firms’ innovation from a micro-perspective, but also provides theoretical and empirical support for firms to better cope with challenges under decoupling and deglobalization context.
Abstract: Government subsidies play a crucial role in enhancing the innovation level and growth of startup companies, and they also have a significant impact on the transmission of hidden information to the market. This article utilizes data from Hubei Province's incubators for the years 2019-2021 and employs the signaling theory to analyze the mechanism of government subsidies on the innovation performance of entrepreneurial firms within these incubators. The research findings are as follows:
1. Government subsidies have a positive impact on the innovation performance of entrepreneurial firms within incubators.
2. Venture capital plays an intermediary role in the positive relationship between government subsidies and the innovation performance of entrepreneurial firms within incubators.
3. Special considerations for incubators within national high-tech zones: The study mentions that for incubators located both within national high-tech zones and specialized incubators, the effect of government subsidies on improving innovation performance through the intermediary role of venture capital is not significant.
In summary, this research provides valuable insights for government policy adjustments concerning incubators and informs the strategic choices of incubators for their own development. Governments may consider encouraging the flow of venture capital into startup companies and incubators to accelerate innovation and growth. Additionally, for specific types of incubators, more tailored policy measures may be needed to better support innovation and development. These findings contribute to optimizing the startup ecosystem and fostering economic growth.
Ambidextrous innovation plays an important role in the process of high-quality sustainable development of firms. Resource-based theory suggests that unique and valuable knowledge is the key to innovation. Proactive boundary-spanning search, as an important way to acquire external knowledge, can facilitate ambidextrous innovation. Therefore, it is worth exploring how proactive boundary-spanning search affects ambidextrous innovation. Moreover, in the new normal of VUCA and the era of digital intelligence, firms not only need to have organizational resilience to cope with external emergencies and unexpected events, but also need to have digital capability to orchestrate and utilize knowledge. Thus, it is necessary to uncover the relationship between proactive boundary-spanning search and ambidextrous innovation by considering organizational resilience and digital capability.
Drawing on resource-based theory, dynamic capabilities theory and information processing theory, this study explores the impact of proactive boundary-spanning search on ambidextrous innovation and organizational resilience, and examines the moderating role of digital capability. Based on the data of 268 knowledge-intensive firms, the empirical results indicate that proactive boundary-spanning search has an inverted U-shaped relationship with exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, and it also has an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational external and internal resilience. The results also find that organizational external resilience partially mediates the relationship between proactive boundary-spanning search and exploratory innovation, while organizational internal resilience partially mediates the relationship between proactive boundary-spanning search and exploitative innovation. Moreover, digital capability moderates and flattens the inverted U-shaped relationship between proactive boundary-spanning search and organizational external and internal resilience, respectively.
This study has four theoretical contributions. First, the research uncovers the nonlinear impact of proactive boundary-spanning search on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. Based on resource-based theory, the results reveal that proactive boundary-spanning search is an important antecedent of ambidextrous innovation and it plays double-edged sword effect on ambidextrous innovation. This deeply reveals the internal driving mechanism of proactive boundary-spanning search on ambidextrous innovation. Second, the research clarifies the nonlinear effects of proactive boundary-spanning search on organizational external resilience and internal resilience. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, the study reveals the important role of proactive boundary-spanning search in organizational external and internal resilience, and enriches the research on the antecedents of organizational resilience. Third, the study elucidates the mediating role of organizational resilience among proactive boundary-spanning search and exploratory and exploitative innovations under the new normal of VUCA. The results clarify the effect of proactive boundary-spanning search on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation via different organizational resilience, and provide new insights for the relationship between proactive boundary-spanning search and ambidextrous innovation. Fourth, the study finds the moderating effect of digital capability on the inverted U-shaped relationship among proactive boundary-spanning search and organizational external and internal resilience, which uncovers the mechanism of proactive boundary-spanning search on ambidextrous innovation by considering organizational resilience and digital capability under the new normal of VUCA and the era of digital intelligence, and provides theoretical guidance for Chinese firms to carry out ambidextrous innovation.
Collaborative innovation of Mission-oriented interdisciplinary scientific research organizations is an important way to form a strong synergy of key core technologies. Based on the in-depth interview data of 5 interdisciplinary organizations responsible for and participating in the Chinese Academy of Sciences' strategic pilot project, the research applied grounded theory to construct a three-dimensional Mission-oriented interdisciplinary scientific research organization's collaborative innovation impact. A factor analysis model is used to explore thepath that is conducive to the collaborative innovation of Mission-oriented interdisciplinary scientific research organizations. The research shows that:organizational characteristics and the operating mechanism of organizational management are internal factors that affect the collaborative innovation of Mission-oriented interdisciplinary scientific research organizations; collaborative motivation, collaborative willingness and collaborative ability are the core factors that affect collaborative innovation among organizations; including policy support, technical standards The institutional environment, including the environmentand the intellectual property system, is an external factor that guarantees the collaborative innovation of Mission-oriented interdisciplinary scientific research organizations.
