The impact of technological diversity and organizational slack on innovation

Abstract This article examines the effects of technological diversity and organizational slack on innovation performance. Negative binomial regression is used to test the hypotheses in a panel data of 2745 cases. The results indicate that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between technological diversity and innovation performance. Moreover, the moderating role of organizational slack is recognized and absorbed slack positively moderates while unabsorbed slack negatively moderates the effect of technological diversity on innovation performance. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.

[1]  Bou-Wen Lin,et al.  Corporate Technology Portfolios and R&D Performance Measures: A Study of Technology Intensive Firms , 2005 .

[2]  María García‐Vega Does technological diversification promote innovation?: An empirical analysis for European firms , 2006 .

[3]  D. Harhoff,et al.  Citation Frequency and the Value of Patented Inventions , 1999, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[4]  Henrich R. Greve,et al.  Organizational Learning from Performance Feedback: A Behavioral Perspective on Innovation and Change , 2003 .

[5]  F. Malerba,et al.  Knowledge-relatedness in firm technological diversification , 2003 .

[6]  Donna J. Kelley,et al.  Advantage beyond founding: The strategic use of technologies , 2002 .

[7]  P. Christopher Earley,et al.  Impetus for action: A cultural analysis of justice and , 1997 .

[8]  A. Jaffe,et al.  Evidence from Patents and Patent Citations on the Impact of Nasa and Other Federal Labs on Commercial Innovation , 1997 .

[9]  J. Hair Multivariate data analysis , 1972 .

[10]  F. Narin,et al.  Science and Technology as Predictors of Stock Performance , 1999 .

[11]  Glenn B. Voss,et al.  The Effects of Slack Resources and Environmentalthreat on Product Exploration and Exploitation , 2008 .

[12]  Justin Tan,et al.  Curvilinear Relationship Between Organizational Slack and Firm Performance , 2003 .

[13]  Douglas J. Miller Firms' technological resources and the performance effects of diversification: A longitudinal study , 2004 .

[14]  Elena Huergo,et al.  How Does Probability of Innovation Change with Firm Age? , 2004 .

[15]  Narayanan Jayaraman,et al.  What is the Relationship between Organizational Slack and Innovation , 2006 .

[16]  C. C. Pegels,et al.  The impact of technology strategy on firm performance , 1996 .

[17]  Robert E. Hoskisson,et al.  International Diversification: Effects on Innovation and Firm Performance in Product-Diversified Firms , 1997 .

[18]  Mark Turner,et al.  A Mechanism of Creativity , 1999, Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

[19]  Ove Granstrand,et al.  Towards a theory of the technology-based firm 1 Paper originally presented at the workshop on `Techn , 1998 .

[20]  James D. Thompson Organizations in Action , 1967 .

[21]  H. Greve Exploration and exploitation in product innovation , 2007 .

[22]  Z. Griliches Patent Statistics as Economic Indicators: a Survey , 1990 .

[23]  Mohan Subramaniam,et al.  The Influence of Intellectual Capital on the Types of Innovative Capabilities , 2005 .

[24]  Peter J. Sher,et al.  The effects of innovative capabilities and R&D clustering on firm performance: the evidence of Taiwan's semiconductor industry , 2005 .

[25]  Mark P. Sharfman,et al.  Antecedents of Organizational Slack , 1988 .

[26]  J. Lerner The Importance of Patent Scope: An Empirical Analysis , 1994 .

[27]  Justin Tan,et al.  Organizational Slack and Firm Performance During Economic Transitions: Two Studies from an Emerging Economy , 2003 .

[28]  Allen M. Weiss,et al.  The relationship between a firm's level of technological innovativeness and its pattern of partnership agreements , 1997 .

[29]  Scott W. Geiger,et al.  Exploration and exploitation innovation processes : The role of organizational slack in R & D intensive firms. , 2006 .

[30]  Justin Tan,et al.  Curvilinear Relationship Between Organizational Slack and Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese State Enterprises , 2003 .

[31]  L. Bourgeois On the Measurement of Organizational Slack , 1981 .

[32]  R. S. Schmidt NASA pressure-relieving foam technology is keeping the leading innerspring mattress firms awake at night , 2009 .

[33]  Jitendra V. Singh Performance, Slack, and Risk Taking in Organizational Decision Making , 1986 .

[34]  Ranjay Gulati,et al.  Is Slack Good or Bad for Innovation , 1996 .

[35]  Francina Orfila-Sintes,et al.  Innovation activity in the hotel industry , 2009 .

[36]  David L. Deeds,et al.  The impact of stocks and flows of organizational knowledge on firm performance: an empirical investigation of the biotechnology industry , 1999 .

[37]  Mary Ellen Mogee,et al.  Using Patent Data for Technology Analysis and Planning , 1991 .

[38]  Bart van Looy,et al.  Technological Diversification, Coherence and Performance of Firms , 2007 .

[39]  Chung-Jen Chen,et al.  Patent portfolio diversity, technology strategy, and firm value , 2006, IEEE Trans. Engineering Management.

[40]  F. Damanpour Organizational Innovation: A Meta-Analysis Of Effects Of Determinants and Moderators , 1991 .

[41]  J. March,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of the Firm , 1964 .

[42]  Robert S. Dooley,et al.  The New Task of R&D Management: Creating Goal-Directed Communities for Innovation , 1997 .

[43]  P. Beamish,et al.  INTERNATIONAL DIVERSIFICATION AND FIRM PERFORMANCE: THE S-CURVE HYPOTHESIS , 2004 .

[44]  Scott W. Geiger,et al.  A multidimensional examination of slack and its impact on innovation. , 2002 .

[45]  Omar El Sawy,et al.  Absorptive Capacity Configurations in Supply Chains: Gearing for Partner-Enabled Market Knowledge Creation , 2005, MIS Q..

[46]  A. Gambardella,et al.  Does technological convergence imply convergence in markets? Evidence from the electronics industry , 1998 .

[47]  F. Kodama,et al.  Technological diversity of persistent innovators in Japan: Two case studies of large Japanese firms , 2004 .

[48]  Jonathan O'Brien,et al.  The capital structure implications of pursuing a strategy of innovation , 2003 .

[49]  C. Freeman Economics of Industrial Innovation , 1975 .

[50]  Kuo-Chih Cheng,et al.  The impact of quality of IS information and budget slack on innovation performance , 2009 .

[51]  Paul W. Beamish,et al.  Geographic Scope, Product Diversification and the Corporate Performance of Japanese Firms , 1999 .

[52]  Adam B. Jaffe,et al.  Reinventing Public R&D: Patent Policy and the Commercialization of National Laboratory Technologies , 2001 .

[53]  M.B. Lawson,et al.  In the praise of slack: time is of the essence , 2001, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[54]  Paul Stoneman,et al.  Handbook of the economics of innovation and technological change , 1995 .

[55]  A. A. Kayal,et al.  An empirical evaluation of the technology cycle time indicator as a measure of the pace of technological progress in superconductor technology , 1999 .

[56]  G. George Slack Resources and the Performance of Privately Held Firms , 2005 .

[57]  P. Almeida,et al.  Subsidiaries and knowledge creation: the influence of the MNC and host country on innovation , 2004 .

[58]  F. Narin,et al.  Patents as indicators of corporate technological strength , 1987 .

[59]  Michelle Gittelman,et al.  Does Good Science Lead to Valuable Knowledge? Biotechnology Firms and the Evolutionary Logic of Citation Patterns , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[60]  Timothy Schoenecker,et al.  Indicators of firm technological capability: validity and performance implications , 2002, IEEE Trans. Engineering Management.

[61]  Ricky W. Griffin,et al.  Toward a Theory of Organizational Creativity , 1993 .

[62]  J. Rodney Turner,et al.  The management of innovation in project-based firms , 2000 .

[63]  Nicholas Argyres CAPABILITIES, TECHNOLOGICAL DIVERSIFICATION AND DIVISIONALIZATION , 1996 .