Three essays on innovationThe role of culture, environmental turbulance and knowledge transfer

Resumen

Innovation has become an increasingly important determinant of an organization’s performance, success and longer-term survival, and the role of innovation is being paid increasingly more attention by practitioners and academics. This thesis concentrates on the role of cultural factors, environmental turbulence and knowledge transfer in the process of innovation. While the existing research has studied the relationship between culture and innovation, the result has remained fragmented and disconnected; for this reason, this thesis sets out to systematically review the developmental venation and complicated relationship between culture and innovation through a literature review. At the same time, existing research related to the influence of culture on innovation is still concentrated at the national and organizational level. What is missing is a more pluralistic view of culture, and thus this thesis sheds light on the role of regional culture where the cultural characteristics have a profound impact on innovation or creativity and regional innovation systems. Moreover, how and to what extent emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) are able to transfer knowledge and foster their domestic innovation is an important, yet rarely explored research question. Furthermore, EMNEs are confronted with a complex institutional environment at home, and in their technological and market environment. This thesis will investigate the influence of EMNE’s perceived home-country environmental turbulence and knowledge transfer activities on its domestic innovation performance. Specifically, this thesis consists of three independent essays related to innovation. Publication 1 conducts a systematic literature review that holistically analyzes the impact of culture on innovation. By reviewing peer-reviewed articles from a 37-year period (January 1980–January 2017), this study developed two clusters of culture definitions in relation to innovation: organizational culture and national culture. After reporting the findings of the systematic literature review, this study discussed how a variety of culturally related factors combine to facilitate or restrict innovation performance in their corresponding clusters. The findings highlight the complex and idiosyncratic relationship between culture and innovation. Future research in these lines is recommended. Publication 2 explores the relationship between culture and VI regional innovation performance in China, where innovation is deemed as key for sustainable economic development. The diversity of China’s regional culture and its rising economic and innovative capability enhancement provide an opportunity for such an exploration. Moreover, the study adds to a better understanding of alternatives to the popular, and critically discussed cultural dimensions of Hofstede in examining innovation performance. Publication 3 collected data through a survey of high-tech Chinese firms in the Zhejiang province from 2013 to 2015. It finds that innovation performance of EMNEs is positively influenced by knowledge transfer activities (knowledge replication and knowledge adaption) and technological and market turbulence, while it is negatively influenced by institutional turbulence. In addition, different aspects of environmental turbulence moderate the relationship between knowledge transfer practices and innovation performance of EMNEs in different ways. This essay provides particular guidance for EMNEs’ managers on how to develop an innovation strategy by leveraging external knowledge, adaptive innovation, and environmental turbulence. It also deepens current knowledge of how EMNEs enhance their innovation by building the linkage between environmental turbulence and absorptive capacity through knowledge transfer activities in an asymmetric international R&D alliance. In general, this thesis provides scholars with an updated and comprehensive research landscape in this important field related to innovation. It also offers a reference by which enterprises can cope with the cultural problems from the national, regional and organizational levels in the innovation process. At the same time, this thesis is conducive to enabling EMNEs to accurately recognize environmental turbulence when establishing R&D alliances with advanced multinational enterprises, as well as to promote their innovative ability through effective transfer and absorption of knowledge.