Abstract
The effects of organizational social capital on organizational innovation have attracted the bulk of attention in recent innovation literature. However, few studies have investigated the effects of organizational social capital on innovation performance from the complex adaptive system (CAS) perspective. Based on the CAS perspective, this paper simulates how organizations in manufacturing and service industries seek higher innovation performance on the rugged fitness landscape, which is determined by the complexity of the six components of organizational social capital. Data are collected from 271 firms including 129 manufacturing and 142 service firms. Empirical results indicate that except for inter-organizational coordination, the other five components of organizational social capital significantly affect innovation performance; and their effects vary between manufacturing and service organizations. Further, simulation results demonstrate that after adaptive evolution, the average innovation performance in manufacturing organizations is higher than that in service organizations.
Highlights
Innovation is crucial for attaining competitive advantages for business organizations (Naranjo-Valencia et al, 2011)
Based on the complex adaptive system (CAS) perspective, the current paper investigated the effects of organizational social capital on innovation performance
By integrating survey study and the NK model, we presented a refined NK model to simulate the adaptive evolution of innovation performance on the rugged landscape, which is determined by the interdependencies among the components of organizational social capital
Summary
Innovation is crucial for attaining competitive advantages for business organizations (Naranjo-Valencia et al, 2011). Business organization have been understood as a CAS. This argument has been discussed by Levinthal and Warglien (1999) showing that the attributes that determine fitness for an organization may comprise the elements of its business strategy, its human resource policy and manufacturing system, and its self-organizing processes depend upon the interdependencies among the attributes. A few further studies have applied the CAS perspective to study organizational innovation (Giannoccaro, 2011). Following the focus of the literature on business organization as a CAS, we aim to investigate that in terms of adaptive evolution, how business organizations seek higher innovation performance
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