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| R&D Transition and Organizational Failure:the Moderating Roles of Technological Capability and Isomorphic Pressures |
| Ma Haiyan,Guo Yingying |
| （School of Economics and Management,China University of Geosciences,Wuhan 430074,China） |
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Abstract The development of digital economy and the rise of industrial Internet have intensified the competition of enterprises in value supply. Organizations need to keep R&D innovation to maintain the competitive advantage in product and factor markets and achieve sustainable growth. The R&D based exploitation and exploration are the key elements of firm innovation. The exploitative R&D is based on existing knowledge to expand existing products and services for existing customers; and explorative R&D pursues new knowledge and develops new products and services for emerging customers or markets. The sequential ambidexterity of two types of R&D activities at different stages can effectively alleviate the resource and management constraints in the ambidexterity. To practice the opposing modes between exploratory R&D and exploitative R&D is named R&D transition. However, there exists the lucky man bias in the current research focusing on the promotion of R&D transition on organizational performance, that is, enterprises that successfully realize the transition can improve their performance, but as a drastic organizational change, some enterprises also fail due to R&D transition. Therefore, based on the punctuated equilibrium theory, this paper focuses on the 'dark side' of R&D transition, regards the short-term and violent fluctuation of R&D investment as the attempt of R&D transition, reveals the risk of R&D transition, and analyzes the mechanism of R&D transition on organizational failure. In addition, few studies have explored the relationship from the perspective of contingency, indicating that there is still much room for research on the internal mechanism of R&D transition and organizational failure. Existing research shows that organizations with strong technological capability have rich R&D experience, and they can flexibly respond to emergencies, which helps organizations overcome inertia and reduce resistance to change. Also, in an uncertain situation, the isomorphic pressure from the outside of enterprises will affect the decision-making process of organizational managers, thereby affecting the R&D investment of enterprises. Therefore, this paper further examines the moderating effect of technological capability and isomorphic pressure within enterprises on the relationship of R&D transition on organizational failure. #br#This paper takes China' s A-share listed manufacturing enterprises from 2007 to 2020 as the research sample. We eliminate obvious singular value samples, such as enterprises with asset liability ratio greater than 1 or negative sales revenue. Only enterprises with complete R & D investment data for 8 consecutive years or more shall be retained. We also get rid of enterprises with missing or incomplete key data. Combined with the actual data of listed enterprises, this study defines organizational failure as the ST of an organization due to lack of solvency or continuous loss and lack of sustainable operation ability. After data screening and processing, 1002 sample enterprises are retained, of which 73 enterprises are ST or ST* during the observation period, which were considered to be organizational failures. Furthermore, this paper verifies the hypothesis by constructing regression model. To verify the hypothesis, this paper uses logistic regression model to test relevant hypotheses and draws the moderating effect figures of technological capability and isomorphic pressure.#br#When the organization is in the exploratory R & D stage and the isomorphic pressure is small, managers tend to reduce R & D investment and invest organizational resources in short-term benefits rather than medium and long-term investment. At this time, the improper investment in organizational R & D increases the risk of the transformation from exploratory R & D to utilization R & D, and intensifies the impact of the transformation from exploratory R & D to utilization R & D on organizational failure. While the degree of organizational isomorphism increases with the increase of isomorphic pressure of successful enterprises. On the one hand, it can improve the perception ability of management decision-makers to the external environment, enable the organization to follow the successful enterprises to adopt new technologies and avoid losing competitive advantage; On the other hand, it will also reduce the cost and uncertainty of organizational technology search, and make the organization smoothly transform to utilization R & D, so as to weaken the impact of the transformation from exploratory R & D to utilization R & D on organizational failure.#br#Therefore it draws the conclusions that the intensity of R&D transition is positively correlated with the possibility of organizational failure. The technological capability has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between the transition from exploitative R&D to explorative R&D and organizational failure, while successful firms' isomorphic pressures play an inverted 'U' moderating role in the relationship of transition from explorative R&D to exploitative R&D and organizational failure. #br#This study attempts to explore the impact of R&D transition on organizational failure, responds to relevant scholars' research initiatives on dynamic R&D investment from a dynamic perspective, and deepens the research on sequential ambidexterity and R&D decision-making. In addition, this study introduces two contingency factors, technological capability and isomorphic pressure, as the situational conditions of internal capability and external environment on the relationship between R&D transition and organizational failure, which not only helps to enrich the boundary conditions of organizational R&D management, strengthen the research on the relationship between R&D behavior and organizational results, but also helps to expand the context of technological capability and isomorphic pressure. The research results of this paper have certain guiding significance for enterprise R&D decision. Firstly, organizations need to dynamically adjust R&D investment and focus on the transition of enterprise innovation mode. When enterprises obtain innovative achievements through explorative R&D, they should adjust the strategic focus on exploitative R&D, reasonably reduce R&D investment, excavate the value of existing achievements, and pursue actual benefits, and vice versa. Secondly, enterprises with low technological capability should actively acquire external knowledge through mergers and acquisitions and R&D cooperation to strengthen their own technological capability. Finally, organizational managers should avoid the myopic behavior of reducing R&D investment to achieve short-term interest goals.#br#
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Received: 17 May 2021
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