The impact of the collaborative innovation network embeddedness on enterprise green innovation performance

Abstract

As the market environment becomes increasingly competitive, enterprises that rely solely on internal research and development innovation are no longer sufficient to meet the demands of competition. Consequently, enterprises have broken down organizational boundaries and shifted from closed innovation to open collaborative innovation. The flow of knowledge across organizations facilitates the acquisition of heterogeneous resources from partners, promotes the integration and configuration of internal and external knowledge, thereby enhances the competitiveness of enterprises. However, some scholars argued that collaborative innovation does not always achieve win-win outcomes, and the existence of substitution effects between enterprises and their partners may hinder the innovation level of the focal enterprise. Therefore, based on the resource-based theory and the network embeddedness theory, this study constructs a theoretical model to investigate the effects of network embeddedness, network experience and partner diversity on enterprise green innovation performance in the Chinese green collaborative innovation network. The impact of network embeddedness on innovation performance is examined from two dimensions: structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness. The moderating effects of network experience and partner diversity are analyzed to further explain this phenomenon. Using Chinese green patent data from 2000 to 2015 as the research object, the collaborative innovation network of enterprises is constructed, and the network characteristic variables are calculated using social network analysis methods. Finally, negative binomial regression and robustness tests are conducted using STATA software. The research findings provide managerial implications for Chinese enterprises to achieve competitiveness and sustainable development.