High-technology Firms Research Articles

A Taxonomy of Social-Network-Utilization Strategies for Emerging High-Technology Firms

Lack of network transparency limits entrepreneurs’ effective utilization of their networks for resource acquisition. Virtual platforms (e.g., SNS-Social Networking Sites) have the potential to leverage entrepreneurial networks. The purpose of this study is to understand why and how technology-based entrepreneurs use social media to effectively access resources and, in turn, shed light on how they overcome network transparency in the early stages of their new venture formation process. Through in-depth interviews with the (co-) founders of 18 technology-based start-ups, this work reports a four-way taxonomy of strategic use of SNS. This research provides new theoretical insights for the technoentrepreneurship literature and reports practical insights for entrepreneurs on how to use social media effectively. Furthermore, this work is a guide for future research looking at digital literacy in entrepreneurship.

The FDI Spillover Effect on the Efficiency and Productivity of Manufacturing Firms: Its Implication on Open Innovation

In this study, we investigated the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) spillovers on firm production and technical efficiency in Indonesia’s manufacturing sector from 2010 to 2015. We scrutinized three different channels of horizontal spillover, namely, demonstration, technology adoption, and competition channels. We also captured the heterogeneous effect of firms by categorizing them based on their technological intensity (low, medium, or high). Using time-varying stochastic production frontier analysis, we found that manufacturing firms in each technological group benefit from FDI, either from productivity improvement or technical efficiency improvement. High-technology firms mainly benefit from FDI due to their high technological absorption capability. Meanwhile, medium-high and medium-low tech firms increase productivity through the demonstration effect and the technology adoption channel, despite underperforming in technical efficiency. Finally, low-tech firms, which primarily employ unskilled workers, suffer from large inefficiency. We found that increased FDI, combined with improvements in technology absorption capacity, can help revitalize the productivity of low-tech firms. FDI, firm size, and access to foreign inputs all support production effects but have no direct positive impact on firms’ technical efficiency. The results of this study suggest that the government should ensure that domestic firms can absorb the technical capability of a foreign presence. Open innovation can help strengthen foreign–domestic linkages to contribute to growth through the transfer of knowledge, skills, and technologies.

The emergence of team entrepreneurial passion from team helping: An affective events theory perspective

Research has acknowledged the outcomes of entrepreneurial passion, but little is known in regard to how it occurs. In this article, we shift the focus to the team level and investigate the emergence of team entrepreneurial passion (TEP) from the team helping perspective. Drawing on affective events theory (AET), we examine how team help-seeking and -giving facilitate TEP. Team-level analyses were performed on data drawn from 487 members of 112 new venture teams in an accelerator for high-technology firms in China. Our findings show that team help-seeking and -giving are in a direct relationship with TEP; we highlight how the interaction between these two aspects is positively associated with TEP. This article extends the study of TEP to team helping and treats the latter in relation to its two separate but related aspects of seeking and giving. Further, our focus moves from singular effects to an interactive perspective on the antecedents of TEP.

CEO labor market and R&D investment in high-technology firms: an empirical study on the disciplinary effect of CEO labor market

AbstractPrevious corporate governance research has paid little attention to the role of chief executive officer (CEO) labor markets in controlling CEO behaviors because the CEO labor market has been considered inefficient. With the increasing mobility of top executives across firms, however, the potential of CEO labor markets to serve as an external disciplining force has been growing. In this study, we argue that CEOs will be more pressured to engage in desirable behaviors as the CEO labor market becomes more efficient. Using a longitudinal sample of S&P 1500 firms in high-technology industries in United States from 2011 to 2019, we found that CEOs tend to increase R&D investment as CEO labor market supply increases. We also found that the tendency is greater when external CEO succession is more frequent in the market. Our results demonstrate that CEO labor markets have the potential to function as an effective external governance mechanism.

R&D, patents, and financing constraints of the top global innovative firms

Highly innovative firms face unique financing constraints because there is often a greater degree of information asymmetry between firms and potential lenders. Prior literature indicates that patents provide a quality signal to external investors that potentially help mitigate internal liquidity constraints. In this paper, we study the joint impact of firms’ patent stocks and operating profit margin, which acts as a proxy for internal funds, on R&D expenditures in a panel of the top 2000 corporate R&D performers worldwide. We find that patenting activity lessens the impact of negative internal liquidity shocks on innovation for relatively smaller firms. In contrast, patenting activity does not have an attenuating effect for relatively larger firms. The results are consistent for high and medium-high technology firms and are robust to country specific controls.

Rising to the Challenge: Top Executives with R&D Background, Risk-Taking and Corporate Innovation

More than half of Chinese high-technology firms are led by top executives (chairman and CEO) with R&D background. This study investigates whether and how top executives’ R&D background affects corporate innovation outcomes using a sample of listed firms in the high-technology industries in China. We find that the R&D background of top executives is positively related to innovation outcomes. We also find evidence on the mediating effect of R&D expenditure and moderating effect of corporate risk-taking on the above relationship. Our baseline results are robust to tests that address concerns caused by potential unobservable characteristics, reverse causality and other issues. Findings of our study have important implications for firms that aim to enhance their innovation outcomes and countries regarding their research policymaking and R&D management.

Research on Investment Performance of Venture Capital Network Community in the Internet Industry

Venture capital has emerged as an important intermediary in financial markets, providing capital to young high-technology firms that might have otherwise gone unfunded. Venture capitalists have developed a variety of mechanisms to overcome the problems that emerge at each stage of the investment process. This study selected the China Venture (CV) source database for venture capital (VC) research in the Chinese Internet industry and extracted information on investment time, VC firms, and investment amount. Combining theoretical analysis and empirical research, the differences between the leader community and the self-organizing community in the Chinese Internet industry are analyzed and the reasons and paths leading to the change of investment performance are determined. It is found that the information dissemination of core nodes promotes the information dissemination of leaders’ communities and the two kinds of organizational learning have different effects on investment performance in the two communities. Under experimental learning and information dissemination, the investment performance of the leader community is greater than the self-organizing community. The outcomes of this research can be used as a reference for the sustainable development of the Chinese Internet industry.

Exploring the mitigation potential for carbon dioxide emissions in Indonesia’s manufacturing industry: an analysis of firm characteristics

This study investigates ways to effectively reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Indonesia’s manufacturing industry, by firm characteristics. It is important to determine the firm characters that have the greatest potential to decrease CO2 emissions. The Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method is used to decompose CO2 emissions into the key factors influencing changes in CO2 emissions, such as economic activity, industrial structure, energy intensity, energy structure, and emissions coefficient during the 2010–2018 period. The findings indicate that changes in CO2 emissions in industrial sub-sectors vary. High technology firms had the lowest average emissions compared to firms with other technology. Large-sized firms had the lowest emissions than small and medium firms. Foreign private firms had lower emissions than national private firms did. Firms in the Java–Bali location had, on average, highest emissions than those outside Java–Bali. Exporting firms had lower average emissions intensity compared to non-exporting firms. This study’s novelty is an analysis of the effect of components that affect changes in CO2 emissions in firm groups based on their characteristics so that policymakers can focus on the potential reduction in CO2 emissions in certain groups of firms, namely firms that use the most energy intensively, is inefficient, and uses low-quality energy. Comparative analysis using firm characteristics reveals that energy-intensive firms’ economic growth determines changes in CO2 emissions in Indonesia’s manufacturing industry.

Good Tech and Social Good: Value Creation by Korean Social and High-Tech Oriented Start-Ups

Through an exploration of Korean high-tech social enterprises, we aim to identify and explore critically (a) how socially engaged, early stage, high technology firms combine social and economic objectives with which to scale up their ventures; and (b) how socially engaged firms seek entrepreneurial opportunity development, including the internationalisation process and the support of stake holding institutions to help scale up the value creation process. We highlight ‘people’, ‘organisations’ and the ‘environment’ dimensions, enabling an understanding of the drivers of socially entrepreneurial activity both from individual and societal perspectives. The analytical framework of our study is based on empirical data acquired from individual in-depth interviews, group interviews, active participatory observations and survey data from 2018 to 2021. We found that social motivation and objectives of the entrepreneurs are equally strong drivers and that they are the principal factors for the scaling up process. The motivation is strengthened by the proactive role of government initiatives which also attract other key stakeholders in the growth process. A combination of digital technology with a high degree of social motivation of the entrepreneurs tends to lead to the development of international market opportunities and attract the interests of international foundations.

Managerial Ability and Financial Outcomes of R&D Spending at Korean High-Technology Firms

This paper examines the effect of managerial ability on the relationship between R&D spending and financial performance at high-technology firms. Since R&D activities are more critical for innovation at high-technology firms than at low-technology firms, high-ability managers at technology firms are expected to manage R&D spending effectively in order to improve firms’ financial performance. The analysis of Korean firms’ operating income and valuation over the past decade shows that managerial ability strengthens the association between R&D spending and financial performance at high-technology firms but not at low-technology firms. These findings clarify the interplay between managerial qualities and firms’ innovation processes at driving firms’ performance.

Exploring New approaches to understanding innovation ecosystems

ABSTRACT A firm’s connections into its ecosystem influences its ability to innovate. Much research on innovation ecosystems has examined high technology firms and locations and has used interview, survey, or science and technology data methods. Our study focuses on a resource-based ecosystem—agri-food in a medium-sized region—and explores a novel method using media sources to identify ecosystem links. We use this method to capture the innovation ecosystem around two plant-based protein firms and a conventional food processor in Winnipeg, Canada. We extract organisational actors from the full text of business and news articles, link co-occurring actors in social networks, and use modularity partitioning to detect communities in these networks. Our results show that the focal agri-food firms vary in their ecosystem associations, with little duplication in the actor organisations across the different firms’ networks. The plant-based protein firm networks had a greater innovation orientation than was noticeable in the established food producer’s network, particularly with industry and civic association intermediaries, government, and other agricultural companies. Insights from using the method and implications of the findings are discussed.

The Influence of Corporate Networks on the Competitive Advantage of High Technology Enterprises in China: The Mediating Effects of Dynamic Capacities and Ambidextrous Combination

As an essential channel to obtain external resources and information, corporate networks have played a key role in enhancing the competitive advantage of firms, especially during the period where most of the high-technology firms in China started to directly seek means other than import technology to boost their competitive advantages. However, there was still ambiguity concerning how exactly corporate networks would affect comparative advantage. This study sought to expose the internal mechanisms among two aspects of corporate networks, namely, the network strength and the network centrality, and competitive advantage. We also examined the mediating effects of the dynamic capabilities and the ambidextrous combination. Managers of 384 high technology enterprises in China were interviewed via telephone calls during the period of January to June 2020. The data were analyzed by utilizing the structural equation method, and the results show that both dynamic capacities and the ambidextrous combination significantly mediate the relationship between corporate networks and firms’ comparative advantage, where the two mediators also had a significant relationship with each other. Moreover, the multigroup analysis also unveiled that the corporate networks had a greater impact on competitive advantage and the ambidextrous combination in the manufacturing sector, while small-sized enterprises and service enterprises would benefit more than others from the improvement in the dynamic capabilities and ambidextrous combination. Our findings fill the gap in the literature and provide useful information to firms in China on how to allocate internal and external resources to enhance their competitive advantages.

Social networks and family firm internationalisation: cases from a transition economy

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of family firms’ types of social networks on internationalisation. By investigating the mechanisms and the process and complexity regarding the operation, function and impact of social networks, this paper aims to gain insights and understand the dynamism concerning the content, and process as well as build rich and detailed construct analysis.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a qualitative case study as a research strategy to examine the impact of social networks on family firm internationalisation. A qualitative research strategy was used as the impact of networking relations and structure is challenging to be measured statistically.FindingsThe findings suggest that family firm internationalisation was gradual and characterised by an incremental learning process. This process facilitated the networking relations and structures that helped firms improve their quality, product diversification and set competitive prices.Research limitations/implicationsThis study’s first limitation is that it focused mainly on low technology manufacturing firms. This paper recommends examining how high technology firms maximise social networks. Secondly, this paper examined family firms; therefore, this paper recommends comparing and contrasting networking relations and family and nonfamily firms' social structure. Thirdly, being limited only to social networks, this study did not focus on the impact of ownership; this paper suggests future studies to examine family ownership and involvement in firm internationalisation.Originality/valueUnderstanding how firms’ social network types influence family firms’ internationalisation in a transition economy is critical to ensuring family businesses’ expansion. This study explains how family firms use social networks to internationalise, extending the current understanding of family business literature in transition economies. It also provides implications for policymakers and family firms managers for improving the growth prospects of family businesses.

Long-term buyer-supplier relationships in IT services

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore an integrative model of supplier success, using a case study of the Thai high-technology firms. The study focuses on buyer-supplier relationships of information systems (IS), including bundles of hardware, software and services because these relationships are dependent on both immediate performance quality of the IS and long-term maintenance of a strong buyer-supplier relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe research used an integrative model that incorporated the DeLone and McLean (2003) IS success model, representing system quality and Clauss and Tangpong’s (2018) impregnable exchange relationship model, representing relationship quality. Exploratory mixed methods study incorporated interviews with supplier relationship managers at five Thai high-technology firms (n = 15) and a quantitative survey of buyer firms (n = 393).FindingsResults supported the integrative system-supplier success model. The most significant limitation is that the study was only conducted in a single industry (high tech) when the IS buyer-supplier relationships modeled here are ubiquitous in modern business.Research limitations/implicationsDespite this limitation, the research contributes to the literature by developing and testing a long-term buyer-supplier relationship success model that incorporates both the characteristics of an IS and the supplier characteristics that lead to positive outcomes.Originality/valueThis study makes intuitive sense and being demonstrated statistically – the fact that the overall quality of an IS, coupled with a well-liked, non-substitutable supplier with a history of good performance, would be considered to be a successful supplier relationship is not especially controversial. The value of the study lies in the integration of the two models to represent different aspects of supplier performance, which could have a different effect on the buyer-supplier relationship in the long-term.

An Analysis of Open Innovation Strategies in Firms in Low and Medium Technology Industries

Open innovation (OI) has been mainly associated with high-technology firms. This paper aims to analyze how firms in low and medium technology industries implement their OI strategy. In doing so, we explore common patterns in OI strategies by considering inbound, outbound, and coupled OI practices. We also examine whether there are differences in innovation performance among companies adopting a specific OI strategy. The study is carried out on a sample of 242 Spanish innovating companies. Based on the relevance of the different OI practices, we identify three types of OI firms: advanced open innovators, intermediate open innovators, and incipient open innovators. Our results reveal that advanced open innovators have a higher performance in product innovation, and that there are no differences among groups in process and organizational innovation.

The Relationship between Ownership Control Disparity and Firm Value: Empirical Evidence from High-Technology Firms in Korea

The Relationship between Ownership Control Disparity and Firm Value: Empirical Evidence from High-Technology Firms in Korea

Consequences of Mergers and Acquisitions on Firm Performance: A Sector-Level Study of Public Listed Companies in China

As the motives of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are different across industries, this study examined the synergy effects of technological gains and capital intensity on the operating performance of the acquiring firms after M&As. The sample comprised 434 completed M&As initiated by Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges with 2,170 observations over the years 2012 to 2016. On average, the firms performed better after M&As. The results show that the operating performance of public health, information technology, telecommunication and financial service firms within the high-technology sector increased after M&As. This suggests that high-technology firms can benefit from M&As through a more extensive knowledge base and financial synergy. We also found that good governance characterized by board independence affects firm performance positively. Therefore, the acquisition of technology through M&As could be an essential corporate growth strategy in the Chinese capital market, which is transforming from a state-controlled economy to a more market driven one. The findings provide useful insights to both corporate players and policy-makers on the types of M&As that stand higher chances to generate positive outcomes and those that need extra measures and further scrutiny to prevent inefficient allocation of resources.

Strategy frames in coopetition: An examination of coopetition entry factors in high-tech firms

Collaboration with competitors offers unique advantages such as increasing market, innovation, and financial performance. However, the degree of coopetition adoption varies between firms, as does the ability to achieve intended outcomes. We address this variety through the lens of strategic frames, essential for understanding business environment interpretations that managers develop, interactions with other actors that they engage in, and the subsequent performance firms may achieve. We examine associations between external and internal coopetition factors as perceived by coopeting managers.To single out the coopetition factors seen by respondents as the most relevant and to evaluate their mutual associations, we apply traditional regression analyses on survey data collected from 352 high-technology firms in Poland. To fully embrace the causal complexity, we advance our regression-based insights by using a complementary necessary condition analysis (NCA) and bottleneck analysis.Our results suggest that coopeting managers place higher importance on customer-driven rather than on resource-driven coopetition factors when considered as sufficient leveraging factors. Still, the complementary NCA reveals internal resources as critical factors for the perception of external factors of coopetition. Finally, we identify external technological development as the most limiting bottleneck for the perception of most internal coopetition factors, highlighting coopetition as a technology-driven strategy.

The Role of CEO Ability in Determining R&D Investment Behavior among High Technology Firms in Korea

This study examines whether and how R&D management in high technology firms differs from that in non-high technology firms in Korea. More importantly, given that CEOs are responsible for R&D investment decision-making, we investigate whether more competent CEOs at high technology firms engage in different R&D management than those less competent. Using the cost stickiness model developed by Anderson et al. (2003), we find that high technology firms exhibit stickier behavior with respect to R&D costs compared to non-high technology firms, indicating that high technology firms are less likely to reduce R&D investment in declining-sales periods. We also find that R&D cost stickiness in high technology firms appears only when the firms are managed by more competent CEOs. This indicates that CEO ability is one of the most important factors explaining R&D management decisions in high technology firms.

The more the merrier? Chinese government R&D subsidies, dependence, and firm innovation performance

AbstractWith the understanding that innovation and high technology industries are essential for sustained economic development, government R&D subsidies have become ubiquitous. However, existing studies on the impact of R&D subsidies have found mixed or conflicting results. Insights from resource dependence theory (RDT) and the Attention‐Based View (ABV) help account for these discrepancies. This study of Chinese high technology firms using the Innovation‐Oriented Firms Database from the Ministry of Science and Technology, finds an inverted U‐shaped relationship between R&D subsidies and innovation performance. The article shows that high government resource dependency, expressed through high percentage of R&D spending coming from government subsidies, diverts attention resources in recipient firms and results in declining innovation performance. The article then tests the impacts of different managerial responses on the dependency‐innovation relationship and find that technology alliances and employee feedback systems mitigate these negative effects. These findings have implications for government innovation policies and firm‐level responses to those policies: government subsidy policies have limits to their effectiveness and firms have strategic options for capitalizing on government resources without sacrificing innovativeness.