Teamwork Culture, Employee Stock Ownership Plan, and Firm Open Innovation: Empirical Evidence From Novel Measures Based on Machine Learning

Abstract

Recent literature has acknowledged the role of organizational culture in shaping firm open innovation outcomes. We contribute to this literature by invoking how firm teamwork culture benefits open innovation outcomes for China A-listed firms. To get the general outcomes, in this article, we rely on the machine learning method and term frequencyinverse document frequency (TF-IDF) weighting scheme to calculate the extent of the firm emphasizing teamwork culture. Our empirical evidence confirms the positive association between teamwork culture and firm open innovation outcomes because the teamwork culture is an implicit guarantee of sufficient resources and an effective collaborative mechanism. We further find that the positive relationship is reinforced by employee stock ownership plan implementation status and times. Overall, empirical evidence further enriches our understanding of open innovation. More importantly, we provide suggestions for managers to emphasize teamwork culture with financial incentives and publish it in disclosure transcripts.