Journal of Engineering and Technology Management最新文献

Recombinant creation fosters breakthrough innovations in firms. This study focuses on a firm’s degree centrality in research collaboration network, exploring its direct effects on a firm’s recombinant creation capability, as well as how such effect is mediated by a firm’s recombinant distance in knowledge base and moderated by innovation competitive pressure. An empirical study using data from 517 listed Chinese companies confirms that a firm’s degree centrality in research collaboration network is positively associated with its recombinant creation capability; recombinant distance in knowledge base has a partially mediating role and the innovation competitive pressure plays a negative moderating role.

The improvement of enterprises’ standardization capability can enhance the quality of products and services, thereby strengthening the core competitiveness. However, it is difficult for a single enterprise to master all the technologies, therefore, standard cooperation is an important channel for enterprises to obtain resources. This article investigates whether and how standard cooperation affects enterprises’ standardization capability. Using the survey data of 165 enterprises in the ICT industry, the study reveals the effectiveness of standard cooperation in promoting enterprises’ standardization capability. In particular, it examines the positive impact of standard cooperation depth and breadth on standardization capability. In addition, technological capability significantly enhances the positive impact of standard cooperation depth on enterprises’ standardization capability rather than that of standard cooperation breadth. Therefore, it is suggested that enterprises should optimize their standard cooperation network relationships, choose different partners according to their technological capabilities, and formulate differentiated standard competition strategies.

An integrated analysis of the academic literature for comprehending and advancing in the human resource digital transformation is required. In this sense, this study aims to analyze the development, current status, and trends of the literature of human resource management research regarding its digital transformation. A total of 284 academic documents published between 2001 and 2022 in all fields of knowledge were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. Data was analyzed through VOSViewer software and bibliometrix R-package. According to the bibliometric analyses, from 2015 digital transformation of HRM had a sustained crescent interest being more remarkable since 2020. Foundational papers, the most influential documents, journals and authors were identified. Through a bibliographic coupling analysis, we identify five current mainstreams: 1) Impact, challenges and out-comes of e-HRM, 2) e-HRM and organizational strategy, 3) Conceptualization of strategic human resource management, 4) Effectiveness of e-HRM: productivity and performance, and 5) e-HRM and innovation. Co-word analysis shows clusters oriented to 1) digital platforms, 2) data analytics and 3) organizational strategy. All the conducted analyses show that human factors have received less attention, a finding confirmed by the thematic map. “Management, strategy, information” and “antecedents, quality and economic growth” are acquiring special relevance in structuring the research field of digital HRM according to the thematic map. These findings and their implications are discussed.

Effective collaboration across departments in an organization is critical to innovation success. Our purpose was to investigate factors contributing to successful innovation involving multiple organizational departments. We employed a multiple-case design with three Norwegian companies in three industries, by examining what happens at innovation project handoffs between different departments in an organization. We found that shared psychological ownership of innovation projects enabled efficient handoffs and helped manage the challenges of working across organizational boundaries. Our analysis identified a variety of enablers, which were consistent across industries, to improve innovation project handoffs and create shared psychological ownership.

Forming joint ventures with potential partners in acquiring the needed resources and technology provides benefits and creates competitive advantage and innovation for multinational enterprises. While cooperative partners can provide JVs with various resources and technologies, allocation of the position of organizational resources remains unclear and needs to be further addressed. The main purpose of the current paper is to emphasize organizational slack resources (e.g., available slack and potential slack) to illuminate the settings that facilitate the effects of investment attractiveness and employee involvement on JV innovation performance. To demonstrate the real industry of JVs and examine the research purpose, we used various databases, including the National Bureau of Economic Research U.S. patent data file, Harvard DVN patent database, Compustat database and SDC global joint ventures databank to examine the hypotheses. The results show the positive and significant direct effects of investment attractiveness and employee involvement on JV innovation performance. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the above direct effects are more pronounced when there is higher available slack and potential slack. The current study contributes by offering new viewpoints on JV, offering new understandings of organizational slack and developing an uncharted bridge between the types of slack and JV innovation studies.

The current wave of digital transformation has placed enterprises under dual pressure from technological changes and the challenges of openness. These two factors are closely intertwined, interact with each other, and are highly complex and uncertain. The implementation of digital technology (DT) is a key driving force, providing crucial support for enterprises to cope with an open innovation environment. Our study seeks to reveal the mechanism of the impact of DT implementation on enterprises’ open innovation practices. Initially, this study introduces a novel concept of DT affordance composed of two dimensions: technological affordance and data resource affordance. Subsequently, DT affordance is employed to elucidate why DT implementation drives open innovation practices, and the duality mediating mechanism of DT affordance is proposed. We then differentiate between two types of digital transformation modes-business pull mode and technology push mode-and explore the interaction effects of the duality of DT affordance. Enterprise survey data indicate that the dual mediating mechanism of DT affordance is significant and technological affordance plays a more substantial role in the business-pull mode. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our research.

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have proliferated in many countries as a policy initiative to foster innovation. Previous studies have mostly analysed average effects on the innovation performance of tenant firms, leading to mixed results. This paper aims to explore whether there are heterogeneous STP effects. Creating a novel database of Spanish patents generated on- and off-park, merged with firm and STP characteristics, we find that younger and larger firms benefit more from being on-park and younger and older STPs have a stronger effect on tenants’ patent quality, while STPs promoted by universities do not exhibit a differential effect.

Within a constantly evolving technological environment, it is imperative for innovative organizations to be able to successfully respond and adapt to environmental changes. To achieve this, they must have the ability to efficiently and timely modify their innovation resources by divesting and reorganizing them, even if these are their core ones. Although divestiture of core innovation resources is an important managerial phenomenon, the literature is rather silent on this issue. To address this significant gap, this study examines how the abandonment of core knowledge areas is related to innovation performance and how this relationship is moderated by absorptive capacity. Two hypotheses are developed about these research questions and tested on a sample of firms from the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical industries. Findings suggest that the abandonment of core knowledge areas is a negative predictor of innovation performance; however, when the abandonment interacts with absorptive capacity the effect becomes positive.

In an era marked by rapid technological advancements and global interconnectedness, understanding how knowledge traverses geographical boundaries is crucial for fostering innovation. This study examines the relationship between knowledge recombination and geographical knowledge diffusion, employing empirical research using patent data from FDA-approved pharmaceuticals. It uncovers that the intensity of knowledge recombination, as denoted by the reference count, and its breadth, as indicated by the knowledge originality index (which captures the 'technological' scope) and the backward citation geographical distance (illustrating the 'geographical' scope), are key factors driving the diffusion of knowledge across geographical regions. These findings are pivotal as they reveal how the depth and range of knowledge recombination significantly influence the spatial spread of technological insights. This research makes a unique contribution to existing literature by shedding light on the impact of knowledge recombination on geographical knowledge diffusion.

This study explores SMEs' innovation investment strategy by assessing their innovation investment level and the relative innovation investment effort during crises. The relative effort is measured by the positive values of the difference between the innovation investment made for the SME and that expected considering its external and internal characteristics. This study adopts a sequential multistage approach with a Spanish SME panel. The results show the relevance of the relative effort for generating product innovations during crises. Furthermore, the relative effort is significant above a level of innovation investment which reconciles the results of previous studies.