Developing supply chain open innovation capability: The mediating role of the knowledge creation process, governance mechanism and technology as a driver

Abstract

In the supply chain, companies are increasingly relying on the combination of internal knowledge creation and external knowledge resources to form a new “open innovation” approach. How to govern inter-organizational relationships (IOR) is a key determinant of knowledge creation, which involves both formal contracts and relationship behaviors. Formal contracts determine the roles and obligations of partners in the exchange, and relationship behavior is generated by mutual benefit from the exchange of various resources. Moreover, when the knowledge creation process requires partners to exchange knowledge, supply chain technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-computing based advanced communication services are key in promoting the partners’ willingness to communicate. Therefore, this study uses the governance mechanism of the supply chain as a theoretical framework, and proposes an innovative and complete research model to explore the factors that influence open innovation capability in supply chains. PLS is used to analyze 140 samples collected from 600 organizations, the response rate is 23.3%. This study finds that supply chain technology has a stronger effect than both of the IOR issues, contractual governance and relational governance, for the exchange of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. The findings improve our understanding on how governance mechanism and technology drive the knowledge creation process towards open innovation success in the context of supply chains.